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THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 



ROOSEVELT EDITION 

VOLUME 2 

THE CHRONICLES 

OF AMERICA SERIES 

ALLEN JOHNSON 

EDITOR 

GERHARD R. LOMER 

CHARLES W. JEFFERYS 

ASSISTANT EDITORS 




THE FIRST SIGHT OF THE PACIFIC— BALBOA IN 
CENTRAL AMERICA, 1513 

From the painting by C. W. Jefferys 



THE 
SPANISH CONQUERORS 

A CHRONICLE OF THE 

DAWN OF EMPIRE OVERSEAS 

BY IRVING BERDINE RICHMAN 




NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

TORONTO: GLASGOW. BROOK & CO. 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1921 



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Copyright, 1919, by Yale University Press 



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CONTENTS 

I. WEST AND EAST Page 1 

II. COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS " 13 

III. BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC " 64 

IV. CORTES AND MEXICO " 91 

V. SPANISH CONQUERORS IN CENTRAL 

AMERICA " 139 

VI. PIZARRO AND THE INCAS " 154 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE " 217 

INDEX " 225 



vu 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE FIRST SIGHT OF THE PACIFIC- 
BALBOA IN CENTRAL AMERICA, 1513 

From the painting by C. W. Jefferys. Frontispiece 

THE BEHAIM GLOBE OF 1492 

From the atlas accompanying K. Kretsch- 
mer's Die Enteckung Amerikas in ihrer 
Bedeutung fur die Geschichie des Welibildes, 
Berlin, 1892. Page 12 

THE FOUR VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS, 
1492-1503 

Based upon the map in Bourne's Spain in 
America, American Nation Series, Volume 
III, New York, 1904, Harper. Facing page 50 

MAP OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF 
MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 

Prepared by W. L. G. Joerg, American 

Geographical Society. " " IH 

MAP OF PIZARRO'S CONQUEST OF 
PERU, 1531-1533 

Prepared by W. L. G. Joerg, American 

Geographical Society. " " 162 



!X 



THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 



CHAPTER I 

WEST AND EAST 

Wherefore we may judge that those persons who connect the region 
in the neighborhood of the Pillars of Hercules [Spain] with that to- 
wards India, and who assert that in this way the sea is one, do not 
assert things very improbable. — Aristotle: De Ccelo, ii, 14. 

The Spaniard of the fifteenth century is recog- 
nizable by well-defined traits: he was primitive, 
he was proud, he was devout, and he was romantic. 
His primitiveness we detect in his relish for blood 
and suffering; his pride in his austerity and exclu- 
siveness; his devoutness in his mystical exaltation 
of the Church; and his romanticism in his passion 
for adventure. 

After printing had spread in Spain, the roman- 
ticism of the Spaniard — to confine our observa- 
tions for the present to that trait — was fostered 
by a wealth of books. Amadis of Gaul, Palmerin 



g THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

of England, The Exploits of Esplandidn, Don Beli- 
anis — all these works were filled with heroes, 
queens, monsters, and enchantments; and all, it 
is needless to remark, held an honored place upon 
the shelves of Miguel de Cervantes, that Span- 
ish romanticist par excellence, the author of Don 
Quixote. 

But prior to 1500, or down to 1492, let us say, 
the romanticism of the Spaniard, like that of other 
Europeans, was ministered to not so much by 
books as by tales passed from mouth to mouth: 
tales originating with seamen and reflected in the 
names on mariners' charts; and tales by landsmen 
recorded in the relations, reports, and letters of 
missionaries, royal envoys, and itinerant merchants. 

To the west of Spain stretched the Atlantic 
Ocean, and in the Atlantic the lands most remote 
were the Canaries, the Madeiras, the Cape Verde 
Group, and the Azores. What was beyond the 
Canaries, the Madeiras, the Cape Verde Group, 
and the Azores.? To this the answer was : "Naught 
so far as known, save the Atlantic itself — the 
Mare Tenebrosum or Sea of Darkness; a sea so 
called for the very reason that within it lies 
hid whatever land there may be beyond these 
islands." 



WEST AND EAST 3 

West of Ireland but east of the longitude of 
the Azores, seamen said, was to be found the is- 
land of Brazil; west of the Canaries and also 
west of the longitude of the Azores, the great is- 
land of Antillia; and southwest of the Cape Verde 
Group, at an indeterminate distance, the island of 
St. Brandan. Concerning Brazil, except that the 
name signified red or orange-colored dyewood, par- 
ticulars were lacking; but Antillia — the ''island 
over against, " the "island opposite" — had been 
the refuge, had it not, of the Iberian Goths after 
their defeat by the Moors; and here two Arch- 
bishops of Oporto, with ^ve bishops, had founded 
seven cities. St. Brandan, too, was the subject of 
somewhat specific affirmation; for in quest of this 
island had not St. Brandan, Abbot of Ailach, in 
the sixth century put fearlessly to sea with a band 
of monks.? 

Nor were the islands mentioned all of those for 
which seamen vouched. There were, besides, Isla 
de Mam (Man Island); Salvagio (Savage Island), 
alias La Man de Satanaxio (Hand of Satan) ; Insula 
in Mar (Island in the Sea) ; Reyella (King Island) ; 
and various others. Some of these islands, it was 
surmised, must be the abode of life; if not life of the 
type of the hydras and gorgons of antiquity, at least 



4 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

of a type extramundane and weird — of Amazons, 
of men with tails, of " anthropophagi and men whose 
heads do grow beneath their shoulders," of crouch- 
ing cahbans, of mermaids, and of singing ariels. 

And, amid uncertainties respecting AntilHa and 
her protean sisterhood, one certainty stood out: 
in considerable numbers these islands had figured ' 
boldly on marine charts of accepted authority, 
from the famed "Catalan" of 1375 to the "Bec- 
caria" of 1435, and the "Benincasas" of 1463, I 
1476, and 1482. 

Noteworthy as were the yarns spun by seamen 
in the fifteenth century, tales circulated by lands- 
men — by missionaries, royal envoys, and mer- 
chants — were more noteworthy still. But these 
missionaries and other landsmen, whither did they 
fare? In what quarter did they adventure.^ Not 
in the West, for that was the seaman's realm, 
but in the East these travelers had their domain. 
The chief potentate in all Asia, so Europe be- 
lieved, was Prester John, a Christian and a rich 
man. To find him or some equivalent of him, 
and bring him into helpful relationship with 
Christian but distracted Europe, became the am- 
bition of Popes and secular rulers alike. Hence 



WEST AND EAST 5 

the missionaries. Hence Friar John of Pian de 
Carpine and Friar William of Rubruck, who from 
1245 to 1253 penetrated central Asia to Karako- 
rum. Hence, furthermore, John of Monte Corvino, 
Odoric of Pordenone, and John of Marignolli, 
who, as friars and papal legates from 1275 to 
1353, visited Persia, India, the Malay Archi- 
pelago, China, and even Thibet. 

The tales these landsmen brought were good 
to hear — "pretty to hear tell," as Friar Odoric 
puts it. First, there was Cathay: Cathay of the 
Mongol plains, with its kaans or emperors housed 
in tents, twanging guitars, and disdainful of all 
mankind; Cathay of the "Ocean Sea" with ports 
thronged with ships and wharves glutted with cost- 
ly wares ; Cathay of the city of Kinsay — " stretched 
like Paradise through the breadth of Heaven" — 
with lake, canals, bridges, pleasure barges, baths> 
and lights-o'-love; Cathay of imperial Cambulac 
with its Palace of the Great Kaan, its multitude of 
crowned barons in silken robes, its magic golden 
flagons, its troops of splendid white mares, its as- 
trologers, leeches, conjurers, and choruses of girls 
with "cheeks as full as the moon," who by their 
"sweet singing" pleased Friar Odoric (ah. Friar!) 
most of all. 



6 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Then there was India, including Cipangu or 
Japan with its "rose colored pearls" and gold 
** abundant beyond all measure"; India of the 
"twenty -four hundred islands and sixty-four 
crowned kings"; India of the ruby, the sapphire, 
and the diamond; of the Moluccas drowsy with 
perfumes and rich in drugs and spices; of the golden 
temples and the uncouth gods; of the eunuchs and 
the ivory; the beasts, the serpents, and the brilliant 
birds. Other tales there were, brought by these 
landsmen, the missionaries. Just as the West had 
its Sea of Darkness — the Atlantic Ocean — so 
the East had its Land of Darkness — the extreme 
northeast of Asia, a region of mountain and sand, 
of cold and snow, where dwelt the Gog and Magog 
of Ezekiel. And to reach this dark land, barriers 
must be overcome, defiles fierce with demoniac 
winds, deserts swathed in mystic light and vibrant 
to jigging tunes, valleys awful with dead men's 
bones. 

Moreover, as in the West the mythical islands 
of the Dark Sea were the abode of creatures be- 
yond the thought of man, so in the East the Dark 
Land harbored beings quite as preternatural. 
Here, co-tenants, so to speak, of Gog and Magog, 
were the Cynocephalse or dog-headed creatures; 



WEST AND EAST 7 

the Parocitae so narrow mouthed as to be forced 
to subsist exclusively on odors; jointless hopping 
creatures who cried "chin chin"; one-eyed crea- 
tures; midget creatures; and what not. "I was 
told," says Friar Rub ruck, "that there is a prov- 
ince beyond Cathay and at whatever age a man 
enters it that age he keeps which he had on enter- 
ing — which," naively exclaims the friar, "I do not 
believe." Odoric had far more hardihood in narra- 
tive, for, speaking of India, he notes: "I heard 
tell that there be trees which bear men and women 
like fruit upon them . . . [These people] are 
fixed in the tree up to the navel and there they be; 
when the wind blows they be fresh, but when it 
does not blow they are all dried up. This I saw 
not in sooth, but I heard it told by people who had 
seen it." 

As a skeptic among tale-bringers from the East, 
however, John of Marignolli ranks foremost. A 
Paradise on earth still somewhere existing; an 
Adam's footprint in Ceylon; a Noah's Ark still 
on Ararat — such things were verities to him ; but 
not so preternatural creatures. "The truth is," 
he declares, "no such people do exist as nations, 
though there may be an individual monster here 
and there." Indeed, so adventurous in skepticism 



8 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

is John that in some particulars he o'erleaps 
himself. "There are," he avers, "no Antipodes — 
men having the soles of their feet opposite to ours. 
Certainly not." He has learned too, "by sure 
experience," that "if the ocean be divided by two 
lines forming a cross, two of the quadrants so re- j 
suiting are navigable and the two others not navi- 
gable at all, for God willed not that men should 
be able to sail round the whole world." 

So far as missionaries were concerned, the East 
might lure them to Cathay, or even to farthest 
India, through interest in some shadowy Prester 
John, an interest largely of a religious nature; but 
it was otherwise with royal envoys and merchants. 
The lure of the East for them was treasure and 
merchandise, in other words, wealth.. As early 
as 1165-67, a Spanish Jew of Navarre, Rabbi Ben- 
jamin by name, who was concerned in trade, set 
forth from Tudela, his native city, and visiting 
Saragossa, Genoa, Constantinople, Tyre, Damas- 
cus, Bagdad, and points in Arabia, reached the 
island of Kish and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, 
at the gates of India and within earshot of Cathay. 
He was the first modern European, it is said, "to 
as much as mention China." 

Nearly a century later (1254) appeared the 



WEST AND EAST 9 

royal traveler Hey thum I, King of Lesser Armenia, 
on a visit to Mangu Kaan at Karakorum. Then 
in 1275 came Marco Polo, son and nephew of 
traders bred in the commercial traditions of Ven- 
ice, and himself the first European of parts to tell 
of the splendors of the Great Kaan. Polo's most 
interesting successor (1325-55) was an Arab man 
of the world, gay, selfish, sensuous, and observing, 
Ibn Batuta. Batuta journeyed deviously from Mo- 
rocco to Cathay and India. Thence he leisurely 
returned to his native Tangier by way of Spain; 
and as he strolled he sang: 

Of all the Four Quarters of Heaven the best 
(I'll prove it past question) is surely the West.^ 

To these landsmen, the envoys and merchants, 
the lure of the East was wealth. It was silks : silks 
of Gilan; taffetas of Shiraz, Yezd, and Serpi; "sen- 
dels of grene and broun"; cloth of gold, gold bro- 

^ In the fifteenth century two travelers gained celebrity by their 
narrations: one a Spanish Knight, Ruy Gonzalez of Clavijo; the other 
a Venetian merchant, Nicolo de' Conti. Gonzalez in 1403 went from 
Spain, by way of the eastern Mediterranean and Black Seas, which 
Genoa controlled, to represent Henry III of Castile before Tamerlane 
the Great at Samarcand — "silken Samarcand" — in Mongolia; 
while Conti, retracing in part the steps of Rabbi Benjamin, passed 
(1419-1444) to the mouth of the Persian Gulf and on into the Malay 
Archipelago. 



10 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

cades; silver gauze; silks and satins of Su-Chau; 
cramoisy; fabrics wrought in beasts, birds, trees, 
and flowers. It was also gold: ingots of gold; 
beaten gold; gold and silver plate; gold pillars and 
lamps; gold coronets and headdresses; gold arm- 
lets and anklets; gold girdles, cinctures, censers, 
cups, and basins. 

Pearls, too, of "beautiful water" and gems, es- 
pecially of India, made part of this wealth. Said 
Ibn Batuta: "Men at Kish descend to the bed of 
the sea [the Persian Gulf] by ropes and collect 
shellfish, then split them and extract the pearls." 
Again he said: "I traversed the bazar of the 
jewelers at Tabriz, and my eyes were dazzled by 
the variety of precious stones which I beheld. 
Handsome slaves, superbly dressed, and girdled 
with silk, offered their gems for sale to the Tartar 
ladies who bought great numbers." 
•*^ But of all this wealth — so luring in the fact, so 
alluring in the recital — the chief items were aro- 
matics and spices: sandalwood, aloewood, spike- 
nard, frankincense, civet, and musk; rhubarb, 
nutmegs, mace, cloves, ginger, pepper, and cinna- 
mon. And of spices one stood preeminent — 
pepper. Rabbi Benjamin was of his time when he 
said that "two parasangs from the Sea of Sodom is 



WEST AND EAST 11 

the Pillar of Salt into which Lot's wife was turned " ; 
but he was for subsequent times, as well, when he 
described the pearls and pepper. To the heat of 
pepper land, Malabar, a Persian ambassador to 
India once bore witness in the statement that so 
intense was this heat that "it burned the ruby in 
the mine and the marrow in the bones," to say 
naught of *' melting the sword in the scabbard like 
wax." But this by the way. Pepper it was, the 
spice which in ancient days had formed part of 
the ransom of Rome from Alaric, that throughout 
the Middle Ages and far into the fifteenth century 
constituted in Europe the commodity most prized 
and talked of, for it was the one most costly, the 
one closest to gold in intrinsic worth. 

Prior to 1492, then, the romanticism of the 
Spaniard, as of other Europeans, was stirred by 
tales of the West and tales of the East — tales by 
seamen and tales by landsmen — and these in the 
main were circulated by word of mouth. Fur- 
thermore, so potent were these stories that, even 
when ascribed to mere weavers of dreams, they 
would not be denied and could not be ignored. 
And, in the minds of two or three persons, they 
begat the old question of Aristotle: "Might not 
the Ocean Sea, which bordered Cathay and held 



12 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Cipangu, be one with the Sea of Darkness which 
lay west of Europe and held Antillia? " 




THE BEHAIM GLOBE OF 1492 
After Kretschmer 



1 



CHAPTER II 

COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 

. . . for my purpose holds 
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
Of all the western stars. . . . 
, It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles. 

Tennyson: Ulysses. 

Among sojourners in Spain, prior to 1492, there 

was a Genoese, by name Christopher Columbus. 

He was tall and well-built, of dignified mien, with 

red hair and beard, a long ruddy face, clear gray 

eyes, and aquiline nose. To inferiors his manner 

was exacting and brusque, to equals it was urbane, 

and to superiors it was courtly. His figure showed 

to advantage, whereof he was not unduly aware, 

and he evinced a taste for yellow in beads and for 

crimson and scarlet in caps, cloaks, and shoes. 

Unlike the Spaniards, whom he was to lead, 

Columbus was not in disposition primitive; he 

had no relish for biood and suffering. He was, 

13 



14 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

however, proud, with a measure of austerity; and 
he was highly romantic and strikingly devout. 

His most signal powers, and they were signal 
indeed, were moral powers. In patience, endur- 
ance, tenacity, energy, will — powers which, far 
more than those distinctively intellectual, make for 
greatness — the world has rarely known his equal. 
Imagination, too, he possessed, rich and ardent, 
and it rendered him poetic, eloquent, and persua- 
sive. But, just as he possessed the qualities named, 
so likewise he possessed the defects of them. He 
was masterful and imaginative, but his master- 
fulness tended to ungenerousness and his imagina- 
tion to vagary and mischievous exaggeration. Nor 
was this all. His moral powers were largely de- 
termined in exercise by two positive principles of 
action which were undeniably sinister — vanity 
and cupidity — and under stress of these he be- 
came at times dissimulating, boastful, and crafty. 
It is probable, however, that the sinister in him 
has by recent writers been somewhat over-magni- 
fied. Throughout everything he was sincerely and 
enthusiastically religious. To him, as to others of 
Machiavellian strain, the end justified many means 
but not all, though among the justified means were 
those of guile. 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 15 

According to the findings of the most recent 
scholarship, Christopher Columbus, the eldest in 
a family of four sons and one daughter, ^ was born 
at Genoa on a date between August 26 and Octo- 
ber 31, 1451. His grandfather probably, and his 
father certainly, was a wool-dealer and weaver; and 
the latter at one time also conducted a wine-shop. 
None of his progenitors had place or rank, and his 
sister married a cheesemonger. There were other 
persons in Europe in his time of the sobriquet 
*' Columbus, " one of whom, William of Caseneuve, 
was a corsair and vice-admiral of France under 
Louis XI; and with these Christopher Columbus, 
about 1501, sought to indicate relationship by the 
remark that "he was not the first admiral in his 
family." But the claim, so far as can be ascer- 
tained, was wanting in foundation. 

The education of Christopher was of the most 
elementary sort. It consisted merely of what was 
provided by a school maintained by the weavers' 
guild of the town of his birth, in a little street called 
Pavia Lane. How meager his first advantages were, 
appears in the fact that at no time in life did he as- 
sume to write his mother tongue, Italian, not even 
when addressing the Bank of St. George in Genoa. 

^ Christopher, Bartholomew, Giovanni, Diego, and Bianchinetta. 



16 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

We have seen that as a man Columbus was both 
vigorous of body and imaginative of mind. For 
him, therefore, as a lad in Genoa — the Genoa of 
our travelers. Rabbi Benjamin, Marco Polo, and 
Ibn Batuta — to develop a taste for the sea was 
more natural than not. In fact, he tells us that 
from his fourteenth year he was accustomed to em- 
bark on ships. But in 1472, when he was twenty- 
one years old, he declared before a notary that he 
was by trade a weaver. We may suppose then that 
up to this period his seafaring was tentative or in 
the nature of a youth's adventures; thereafter it 
became more and more an occupation. 

In Genoa, at this time, dwelt two noblemen with 
whom Columbus seems to have been on terms of 
friendship. He went with them in 1475 to the 
island of Chios in the ^gean, where he obtained a 
shipment of malmsey wine, and became familiar 
with *' mastic." In 1476 the two noblemen em- 
barked on a voyage to England, and again Colum- 
bus accompanied them in a flotilla — for it was a 
voyage of importance — which consisted of five 
armed merchantmen. When they were off Cape 
St. Vincent, who should appear but the corsair and 
French vice-admiral, W^illiam of Caseneuve, alias 
"Columbus"! Between the Genoese vessels and 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 17 

those of Louis XI there straightway ensued a des- 
perate struggle. In the end, ships on both sides 
took fire, and the crews leaped overboard. Colum- 
bus of Genoa, the future discoverer, leaped with 
others and, being fortunate enough to be picked 
up, was landed on the Portuguese coast near Lis- 
bon, wounded, drenched, and exhausted. Such, 
in August, 1476, was the advent of Columbus in 
Portugal, an advent certainly fortuitous if not 
"miraculous," as he terms it. 

From Lisbon, Columbus continued in Decem- 
ber his interrupted voyage to England, stopping 
probably at Bristol; and it would seem that he 
even adventured into the seas toward Iceland. "I 
sailed, " he says, as quoted by his son Ferdinand, 
"in the month of February, 1477, a hundred 
leagues beyond the island of Thule [Iceland]." At 
some period prior to 1503 the discoverer had read 
the Latin poet Seneca and found the lines: 

In later ages a time shall come, 
When the Ocean shall relax its chains; 
When Tiphys shall disclose new lands. 
And Thule shall no longer be earth's bound. 

Now Columbus took Tiphys, the pilot, as his own 
prototype; and, to make the identification more 



18 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

complete, he may have deemed it well that the 
discoverer of America should, as a preliminary, 
have fared beyond Thule. 

In the career of Columbus, Portugal was the 
first turning-point. Hither he returned in 1477 or 
1478; and here, in 1479 or 1480, after a trip back to 
Genoa, he married. This event was the reward of 
his piety. In Lisbon there was a convent of the 
religious Order of St. Jacques, called the Convent 
of Saints. Its protegees were bound to vows of 
chastity — conjugal chastity, not celibacy — and 
among them was Felipa, a daughter of two of 
the noblest of Portuguese houses, and Felipa was 
beautiful. Coming daily to the chapel of this con- 
vent to make his devotions, Columbus saw Felipa, 
fell in love with her, and they were wed. To the 
couple, in 1480 or 1481, a child was born — Colum- 
bus's first son, Diego. At this period, too, Colum- 
bus became associated in Lisbon with his younger 
brother, Bartholomew, a prepossessing youth of 
about nineteen, astute, of some education, and 
skilled in the art of limning marine charts. 

The father of Felipa Columbus was Bartholo- 
mew Perestrello, Governor of Porto Santo of the 
Madeira Group, and it is a firm tradition that, at 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 19 

his death in 1457, he left to his wife Isabel, Felipa's 
mother, charts and papers which served first to 
direct Columbus's mind toward great projects in 
the West. Another tradition — long credited, 
then long discredited, and now revived — was that 
Columbus, upon his marriage, settled in the island 
of Madeira, which is near to that of Porto Santo, 
and that, while he was here, a Spanish ship, which 
had been driven westward to the island afterwards 
found by Columbus and named Espaiiola, came 
forlornly back, getting as far only as Madeira. 
Here, so the tradition ran, the pilot of the ship, 
together with such of the crew as survived, de- 
barked; but the crew, famished and sick, all 
died, leaving only the pilot. Then he, too, died 
in the house of Columbus; but not before he had 
imparted to his host the amazing story of his 
voyage and had given to him his log and a chart 
of his route. 

Be the truth of these two traditions what it may, 
it is a well-settled fact that in Portugal Columbus 
met pilots and captains and was enabled to accom- 
pany Portuguese expeditions down the coast of 
Africa. "I was," he says, *'at the Fortress of St. 
George of the Mine, belonging to the King of Por- 
tugal, which lies below the equinoctial line." The 



20 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

object of such voyages was largely the discovery 
of new islands. The Canaries and the Madeiras, 
the outermost of the Azores and the Cape Verde 
Group, all were treasure-trove of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, and there might well be others. In these 
times, indeed, islands rose smiling to greet the dis- 
coverer on his approach. Nay more: where actual 
islands were not forthcoming, imaginary ones de- 
veloped in their stead. But were these isles as 
mythical and imaginary as they were represented.'^ 
The question is pertinent, for upon the answer 
depends in good measure what we shall think of 
the nature of the incentive which underlay the 
voyage of 1492, the voyage resulting in the dis- 
covery of America. 

The very appearance of islands like Antillia, 
Salvagio, Reyella, and Insula in Mar on charts 
such, for example, as the "Beccaria" of 1435 at- 
tests the prevalence of a tradition — and that a 
mature one — that such a group existed. Such a 
tradition could probably have had but one origin: 
chance voyages across the Atlantic from Europe to 
North America, and especially to the West India 
Islands of North America. Indeed, in 1474 or 
1475, Fernao Telles sought the mythical Antillia 
— sometimes called the Isle of the Seven Cities — 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 21 

under express warrant from the King of Portugal, 
Alfonso V. And in his journal of 1492 Columbus 
records that "many honorable Spanish gentlemen 
[of the Canary Group] declared that every year 
they saw land to the west of the Canaries." Again 
he records that in 1484, when he was in Portugal, 
*'a man [Domimguez do Arco] came to the King 
[John II] from the island of Madeira to beg for a 
caravel to go to this island that was seen"; and 
that "the same thing [the existence of an island 
in the West] was affirmed in the Azores." How, 
therefore, there might arise a story, true or false, 
of a shipwrecked pilot who gave to Columbus the 
clue to the finding of the island of Espanola, may 
readily be perceived. But, concerning stories of 
and by pilots, more anon. 

Columbus had now acquired some knowledge of 
the theory and art of navigation, and, incidentally, 
some knowledge of Latin; and having made up his 
mind, as had Telles before him, that in the Atlan- 
tic to the west there yet remained "islands and 
lands" to be discovered, he obtained an audience 
with the King of Portugal and laid before him 
a definite proposal. He asked for three caravels 
equipped and supplied for a year; and, in the 
event of lands being found, for the viceroyalty and 



22 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

perpetual government therein, a tenth of the in- 
come therefrom, the rank of nobleman, and the 
title of grand admiral. 

According to Portuguese chroniclers writing in 
the sixteenth century, the particular "land" Co- 
lumbus had in view was Cipangu or Japan. But, 
whatever Columbus may have disclosed or reserved 
with respect to Japan, or with respect to Antillia, 
at this first interview with the Portuguese King, 
so affronted was the monarch by what he felt to 
be the vanity and presumption of the petitioner 
that he promptly referred his plea to a council of 
three experts, by whom, after some deliberation, it 
was dismissed. Thereupon Columbus, late in 1485 
or early in 1486, left Portugal for Spain. 

At this point in the fortunes of Christopher Co- 
lumbus, there arises for consideration a peculiar 
circumstance. Columbus had a double, the well- 
known cosmographer of Nuremberg, Martin Be- 
haim. Like Columbus, this man was born near 
the middle of the fifteenth century; like him, he 
lacked university training; like him, his early ac- 
tivities were commercial; like him, he settled in 
Portugal (1480-84) ; like him, he voyaged to Africa; 
like him, he was identified with an Atlantic island. 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 23 

Fayal in his case, and married the daughter of the 
Governor; Hke him, he was busied with nautical 
studies in Lisbon; Hke him, he was not highly re- 
gardful of veracity; and finally, like him, he died 
in neglect early in the sixteenth century. Behaim, 
however, unlike Columbus, was of patrician an- 
cestry, was instructed in the use of nautical in- 
struments, became a Knight of Portugal, and at 
Lisbon had the entree to aristocratic and scientific 
circles. 

The extent of his geographical knowledge may 
be inferred from a globe which he completed at 
Nuremberg in 1492, before the return of Columbus 
from his first voyage. His authorities included 
Aristotle and Strabo, Ptolemy, Marco Polo, and 
Sir John Mandeville; but his chief authority was 
Pierre d'Ailly, whose Imago Mundi [World Sur- 
vey], written in 1410, formed a compendium of 
the geographical and cosmographical notions of 
authors such as Marinus of Tyre and Alfraganus 
the Arabian. To put the matter briefly, the ideas 
of Pierre d'Ailly and Marco Polo are strikingly 
expressed in this globe, which shows Cathay and 
India, both marked rich, opposite to Portugal and 
Africa, and about 120° west of the Cape Verde Is- 
lands and the Azores instead of the actual distance 



24 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

of over 200°. Cathay is thus brought forward 
nearly to the position of CaKfornia; Cipango 
[Cipangu] or Japan, marked as especially rich, 
falls athwart the position of Mexico; while Antillia 
lies northeast of the position of Hayti or Espanola; 
and St. Brandan occupies, in part, the position of 
northern South America. 

But why did Behaim take pains to construct a 
globe.^^ The answer is clear. He had recently (1486) 
adventured in a project to confirm his geographical 
ideas ; he had attempted a secret voyage westward 
to Asia in partnership with two fellow islanders — 
Fernam Dulmo of Terceira, a navigator, and Joao 
Affonso Estreito of Madeira, his patron. The en- 
terprise had failed; and yet he did not wish his ideas 
to be lost or appropriated by another. 

Concerning Columbus, however, the important 
question is: Was he indebted to Behaim for his 
own ideas of cosmography — for the idea, es- 
pecially, of a small earth .^^ It would hardly seem 
so. The two men may have met in Portugal, but, 
even if they had, each at the time was guarding a 
secret, or the approaches to one: Columbus, that 
of islands — perchance of a specific island — to 
be discovered; and Behaim, that of a scheme for 
exploiting Asia. That not very much confidential 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 25 

communication between them was likely under the 
circumstances may be conjectured. * 

Columbus, according to his own statement, 
entered Spain after fourteen years spent in vain 
labors in Portugal. As a matter of fact, his stay 
there did not at the utmost exceed ten years, prob- 
ably only five or six. He came accompanied by his 
son Diego, for Felipa, beautiful daughter of the 
Convent of Saints, had probably died soon after 
Diego's birth. Furthermore, he quitted Portugal, 
for what reason may never be known, *' secretly at 
night." 

In Spain Columbus's first objective was Palos. 
Here, at the monastery of La Rabida, whose guard- 
ian, Antonio de Marchena, the future discoverer 
is said to have known in Portugal, he found lodg- 
ings for himself and a temporary home for his son. 

^ Until within recent years, it was the unquestioned belief that the 
views regarding the proximity of eastern Asia to western Europe, 
which Columbus is known to have come to entertain, were due to 
a letter sent him, about 1480, by Paolo Toscanelli, a distinguished 
Florentine astronomer. The letter was accompanied, so it was 
claimed, by a chart of the confronting European and Asiatic sea- 
boards, which Toscanelli himself had drafted, showing Antillia and 
Japan as, so to speak, halting points or stepping-stones across the 
intervening Atlantic Ocean. But the belief in a Toscanelli letter no 
longer is unquestioned. Consult the writings of Vignaud and of 
Bourne, mentioned on page 219. 



26 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

The supposition is that at Palos, which as a sea- 
port was the resort of mariners and where there 
were many Portuguese, Columbus counted upon 
obtaining special information with regard to the 
landfall of some particular early voyage or voyages 
into the West. 

But if Palos was Columbus's first objective in 
Spain, his second was the Court of the Spanish 
sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella. To these per- 
sonages Columbus worked his way, so to speak, by 
the influence of the Duke of Medina Cceli, who had 
wealth; and who at first contemplated assuming 
in the schemes of Columbus a role not unlike that 
of Estreito in the project of Behaim. But, coming 
to realize that the affair was one to be accom- 
plished successfully only under royal patronage, 
the Duke applied to the sovereigns, who com- 
manded that Columbus himself be sent to Court. 

Cordova now for some time had been the seat of 
government, and here Columbus arrived on Janu- 
ary 20, 1486. The sovereigns were then absent, 
but returned at the end of April or first of May, and 
the coveted audience took place. What occurred 
is not known. Presumably Ferdinand and Isabella, 
after a courteous hearing, smilingly put by the 
question of exploration, for they referred it to the 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 27 

Queen's confessor, Hernando de Talavera, an 
ecclesiastic by no means ungenerous or bigoted, 
with instructions to summon a council for its 
consideration. As for the council, not a soul who 
was a member ever revealed aught of its composi- 
tion or doings, save Dr. Rodrigo de Maldonado, 
who says that men of science and mariners were in 
attendance, no less than literary men and theo- 
logues, and that Columbus himself was subjected 
to interrogation. 

Talavera's council conferred at intervals for five 
years, often at Salamanca, and at length, late in 
1490, reported adversely for Columbus, and the 
sovereigns accepted the report. In the life of the 
great Italian adventurer, our future discoverer and 
admiral, these five years are among the most in- 
teresting and significant. They mark, it is true, a 
moral and material decline, but, like the first years 
in Portugal, they mark an intellectual advance. 

While awaiting action by the council, Columbus 
was retained at Court and encouraged by occa- 
sional donations of money — donations appearing 
on record as made to "a stranger occupied with 
certain affairs relative to the service of their High- 
nesses." The sums, in all, came to $510 (170,000 
maravedis); but, small as they were, they had 



28 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

altogether ceased by 1488. In that year it was, or 
at the end of 1487, the preceding year, that Colum- 
bus for a second time fell victim to feminine at- 
tractions. The maiden, like his first bride Felipa, 
was young — eighteen or twenty years old — pos- 
sessed a beautiful name, Beatrix Enriquez, and 
doubtless a beautiful person, but, unlike Felipa, 
she was humble of birth and very poor. So lowly, 
indeed, was she that Columbus did not stoop to 
take her in marriage, but formed with her a liaison^ 
the result of which was the birth, about August 
15, 1488, of his second son and future biographer, 
Ferdinand. 

Between the date just given and the spring of 
1489, Columbus would seem to have gone back to 
Portugal under a safe-conduct from John II, but 
why he went, if he did go, is unknown, and by 
May 12, 1489, he was again in Spain and in at- 
tendance upon Ferdinand and Isabella at the siege 
of Baza. Thenceforth, however, until the final 
rejection of his project by the sovereigns in 1490, 
he drops from view, excepting as we are accorded 
glimpses of him gaining bread for himself and 
Beatrix in Cordova by limning marine charts, 
wherein he evidently had been instructed by his 
brother Bartholomew, and by selling printed 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 29 

books. This vending of printed books may have 
meant much in that intellectual advance which has 
been spoken of as characterizing for the discoverer- 
to-be the days, somber or hectic, through which he 
was now passing. 

Some years before his brother had fallen on hard 
times, Bartholomew Columbus had betaken him- 
self from Portugal (where he had witnessed the 
return of the great Portuguese captain, Bartholo- 
meu Dias, from his discovery of the Cape of Good 
Hope) to enlist the aid of Eang Henry VH of Eng- 
land in his brother Christopher's project. Then, 
abandoning England, he had recourse in turn to 
France, and now was making himself agreeable at 
the Court of Charles VIII. 

Thither Columbus determined to follow him, but 
his departure was prevented by a visit which he 
paid to Pal OS and to the monastery of La Rabida, 
to make further arrangements for the care of his 
son Diego. This visit, unlike the first, does not 
seem to have been inspired by a specific wish for 
light upon voyages, with strange landfalls, under 
strange pilots. Columbus was poverty-stricken 
and, for once, discouraged. With what cheer he 
might, he met his friend, the former guardian. 



30 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Antonio de Marchena, and also (perhaps for the 
first time) the officiating guardian, Juan Perez, 
once confessor to Queen Isabella. 

By these three, under the stimulating zeal of the 
monks, a plan was contrived. Columbus should 
thoroughly canvass the maritime section having 
Palos for a center, for all possible information re- 
garding pioneer voyages into the Sea of Darkness. 
The first seaman to be sought out and catechized 
was Pedro de Velasco, a pilot of Palos itself. Next, 
after Velasco, an unnamed pilot of the port of 
Santa Maria, near Cadiz, was visited. He had 
sailed west from Ireland, and had, he thought, 
sighted the coasts of Tartary — not improbably 
Labrador. Finally a second pilot domiciled in 
Palos, Pedro Vasquez de la Frontera, was waited 
upon, and what was gathered from him was sug- 
gestive indeed. Between 1460 and 1475 he had 
made a voyage into the West, with "a Prince of 
Portugal," to discover "new lands." Their pur- 
pose was to sail "straight West," but, encounter- 
ing that vast field of marine herbage known as 
the Sargasso Sea, he had turned back. 

At this time, in Palos, the most important man 
of maritime affairs was the head of the family 
of Pinzon — Martin Alonso, "best-known and 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 31 

bravest of captains and pilots" — and to him Co- 
lumbus would first have addressed himself, had not 
this mariner been absent with a cargo of sardines 
at Rome. As it was, Columbus awaited his return 
eagerly. 

Pinzon, as it chanced, was at this juncture cher- 
ishing a project of his own for exploring to the 
West, and while in Rome had sought light at the 
library of Pope Innocent VIII upon "lands in the 
Ocean Sea." There he had seen "a map and a 
book," both of which (in the form of copies, no 
doubt) he had brought with him. These docu- 
ments, according to Pinzon's son, Pinzon the 
father not only submitted to Columbus but gave 
into his hands. Furthermore Pinzon and Colum- 
bus now went together to the house of Pedro Vas- 
quez de la Frontera and got him to repeat the tale 
of how, with a Prince of Portugal, he had sailed 
west as far as the Sargasso Sea, from before which 
he had recoiled. It was necessary "to brave this 
obstacle, " said Vdsquez, because by not doing so 
the Prince had failed to find land. If, on meeting 
the Sargasso Sea, one would but keep "straight 
on," it would be "impossible that land should not 
be found." 

How, on his voyage in 1492, Columbus made use 



32 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

of "a chart" whereon he himself had depicted 
"certain islands"; how this chart was passed back 
and forth between him and Martin Alonso Pinzon ; 
and how, apropos of the impending landfall, one 
of the pilots spoke to Columbus of indications from 
"your book," are incidents well known. Nor is it 
less well known that on this voyage, after encoun- 
tering the Sargasso Sea, Columbus despite protest 
"braved the obstacle" and kept "straight on," 
literally "on and on," following as nearly as he 
could the twenty-eighth parallel, till land reward- 
ed his perseverance. 

Not long after the return of Martin Alonso Pin- 
zon from Rome, Guardian Juan Perez, and perhaps 
Pinzon also, wrote to Queen Isabella, asking a 
further hearing for Columbus and his project. The 
request was granted, and Perez was summoned to 
Court at Santa Fe, before Granada. He set out 
in a manner truly Columbian, alone, on a mule, 
secretly at low midnight. He was soon empowered 
to invite Columbus to join him. In December the 
latter came. Ferdinand and Isabella were in re- 
ceptive mood. Granada was about to fall and 
Spain to be delivered from the Moor forever. A 
council was ordered — one, like Talavera's, com- 
posed of philosophers, astrologers, cosmographers. 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 33 

seamen, and pilots. With Talavera's council, how- 
ever, the primary consideration had been the theo- 
retical feasibility of Columbus's project. With 
the new council, it was the practical question of 
ways and means that gave pause. 

Columbus, repeating with emphasis the terms 
submitted to King John II of Portugal, demanded 
of Ferdinand and Isabella a patent of nobility, 
the admiralty of the ocean, the viceroyalty and 
government of all lands discovered, and "a com- 
mission of ten per cent upon everything within 
the limits of his admiralty which might be bought, 
exchanged, found, or gained." That, in addition, 
he should demand three caravels, to cost possibly 
2,000,000 maravedis ($6000), was by comparison 
trifling. 

In after years the discoverer of America was 
wont to complain that in his struggle for recogni- 
tion in Spain "everybody had derided him, save 
two monks," Marchena and Perez. Derided he 
no doubt was, but the cause perhaps was not so 
much his belief in problematical islands and lands 
as his demand for rewards — rewards which, if 
granted, would raise him to a dizzy height, to a 
point of rank, power, and riches next to that of the 
throne itself. 



34 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

As in 1486, so in 1492, in the month of January 
to which we are now come, Columbus was dis- 
missed a second time from the Spanish Court 
and departed sorrowing. The royal flags streamed 
from the towers of the Alhambra, for Granada had 
fallen, but in this event our Genoese took little 
interest. His course led him toward Cordova, for 
here was Beatrix Enriquez with Ferdinand, now 
in his fourth year; and here must now be brought 
Diego, ten or twelve years old, from La Rabida. 
Again it must have been France, his last hope 
among the nations, with which the thoughts of 
Columbus were busy. Be that as it may, when but 
two leagues from Granada who should overtake 
him but a royal constable, sent posthaste by the 
Queen with orders for his return! His demands, 
one and all, would be complied with. 

What specifically it was that induced the Spanish 
sovereigns to change their minds may be only in- 
ferred. Whether it was proof of actual islands to 
the west, proof secretly confided to Columbus at 
Palos, no one knows. Whatever it was, the lost 
cause was powerfully pleaded before Isabella by 
Luis de Santangel, treasurer of Aragon; and before 
Ferdinand by Juan Cabrero, his chamberlain, and 
by Juan Diego of Deza, preceptor to Prince John. 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 35 

The risk was small, the possibilities for God and 
the realm were incalculable — such, we are told, 
was the reasoning. Especially was it the reasoning 
of Santangel; and so wrought upon by it was Isa- 
bella, that, seized with enthusiasm, she is said to 
have tendered her jewels, priceless gems that they 
were, in security for money for the enterprise. ' 

What manner of navigator was this Genoese, 
this Christopher Columbus, by whom this vast 
enterprise had been conceived, and by whom it 

* But just here a question. Columbus knew that the world was 
round, and, like Behaim his double, had read Ser Marco Polo's Book 
and the Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Unlike Behaim, however, 
he in all probability had not read the Imago Mundi of Pierre d'Ailly, 
with its doctrine of a small earth, and hence of a short route to Asia. 
Is it likely, then, that in 1492 his objective was Asia, as was Behaim's 
in 1486? Is it not more likely that it was merely "islands and lands" 
in the far Atlantic? 

And again. In 1492, on the 17th of April, the Spanish sovereigns 
issued to Columbus a Capitulation empowering him, on his own terms, 
to seek "islands and lands" but in no way mentioning Asia; and this 
Capitulation was confirmed by Letters Patent on the 30th of April. 
Now may not the failure here to mention Asia, (Cathay or India) be 
due to a fact — the fact, namely, that Columbus's hopes and expecta- 
tions stopped short of Asia? 

One might perhaps think that the aims of Columbus were exclusive 
of Asia, were it not for two considerations : the first, that he had cause, 
both from Marco Polo's Book and from Pinz6n personally, to be 
aware that Asia was a background to Japan, and, like it, probably 
attainable from the West; the second, that in 1492 he carried with 
him, besides a general passport, a special "Letter" from his sover- 
eigns to "The Most Serene Prince, our very dear friend," etc. — a 
document almost certainly implying the Great Kaan of Cathay. 



36 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

was to be carried out? He was, indeed, no stran- 
ger to the sea, for he had been to Chios in the 
east, to Africa in the south, and to England in the 
north. To use his own words: "I have traversed 
the sea for twenty-three years [?] without leaving 
it for any time worth counting, and I saw all the 
Levant and the West [Azores, etc.], and the North 
which is the way to England; and I have been to 
Guinea." 

In nautical skill, the scientific feature of sea- 
faring, Columbus according to the most compe- 
tent opinion was, however, little advanced. He 
claimed that on his Guinea trips he had verified 
Alfraganus's calculation of the length of a degree 
on the equator as 56% Italian miles. But, aside 
from the fact that at the period of these trips 
(1482-84) he could hardly have known of Alfra- 
ganus or his calculation, for he then presumably 
knew nothing of the Imago Mundi of Pierre d'Ailly 
— a book possibly not then even published — 
there remains the further fact that verification 
was a process quite too complex for any means 
at his disposal. His claim, therefore, tends only 
to prove him guilty of what a stanch admirer 
does not hesitate to characterize as "insufferable 
braggadocio." 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 37 

But, daunted as little by the obstacle of igno- 
rance as by other obstacles, the would-be discover- 
er held unflinchingly to his role, and, when all was 
over and the triumph won, could bring himself to 
say: "I had from [our Lord] a spirit of intelli- 
gence. In regard to navigation He made me very 
intelligent; of Astrology He gave me what was 
sufficient; and also of Geometry and Arithmetic. 
He gave me an ingenious mind and hands apt in 
designing this sphere, and upon it the cities, moun- 
tains and the rivers, the islands and harbors, all in 
their proper place. In this time I saw and studied 
diligently all the books of Cosmography, History 
& of Philosophy, & of other sciences." Yet for all 
this confidence, if the voyage of 1492 had de- 
pended on the technical knowledge of Columbus, 
its history would be brief. Indeed, had it not been 
for Martin Alonso Pinzon, it would never have 
been made in that year. 

Pinzon, we may recall, was in 1492 the chief citi- 
zen of Palos. After the Spanish sovereigns had 
decided to sanction and subvention the Columbian 
undertaking, they gave decree that of the three 
caravels required two should be furnished by the 
town of Palos in discharge of a feudal liability to 
the Crown, and Columbus on the 12th of May set 



38 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

out from Granada to make sure of the vessels. 
The pending expedition was unpopular in itself 
and still more unpopular in that its admiral was a 
foreigner. But at length Columbus obtained the 
three caravels — the Pinta, the Nina, and the Santa 
Maria (capitana). So far well, or fairly well, and 
then a balk. The seamen of Palos unanimously and 
persistently refused to embark. To them the pro- 
ject was "perilous, chimerical, and vain, " a subject 
of derision. Columbus had papers for the im- 
pressment of criminals, but to escape this neces- 
sity he went to Pinzon, who supplied the sailors 
on being assured of some share in the enterprise. 

In respect to size, rig, and equipment, the three 
Columbian caravels were nearly the same. The 
Santa Maria, which was slightly the largest, meas- 
ured about eighty feet in length, twenty-five feet 
in breadth, and fifteen feet in depth, and had a 
capacity of over two hundred tons. All were fullj^ 
decked, had three masts, and, except upon the 
mizzen, were square rigged. The Santa Maria and 
Pinta had each a high poop-deck and forecastle; 
but the Nina, reputed the smallest of the three, had 
neither. All were good sailers, making as a flotilla 
an average speed of fifteen Italian miles an hour^ 
and each had something of an armament. 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 39 

The personnel of the expedition comprised some 
ninety seamen and thirty royal officials, servants, 
domestics, and cabin boys; but no friar or ecclesias- 
tic was listed. In supreme command of the ex- 
pedition was Columbus himself, on the Santa 
Maria; and in command of the Santa Maria was 
her owner, the cosmographer Juan de la Cosa. 
This vessel carried also two pilots, a grand con- 
stable, a physician, an archivist, and an interpreter 
versed in several tongues. The Pinta was com- 
manded by Martin Alonso Pinzon; and one of its 
two pilots was Martin's brother Francisco; while 
as commander of the Nina sailed Vicente Yanes 
Pinzon, youngest brother of Martin Alonso, and 
one of the two future discoverers of subequatorial 
South America. The pilot was the owner, Pero 
Alonso Nino. 

Columbus set sail from Palos on August 3, 1492, 
at sunrise. First, however, he had arranged for 
sending his young son Diego to Cordova, to be 
cared for by Beatrix Enriquez, with whom was his 
younger son Ferdinand. First also — supremely 
first ! — he had made confession and solemnly re- 
ceived the Sacrament. As his ships cleared the 
bar of Saltes and gathered headway, naught but 
inspiring could have been the spectacle: the high 



40 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

prows, the huge square sails each emblazoned with 
its cross, the magnificent sweep of the rakish 
lateens athwart the towering sterns, the flags and 
streamers; the officers crowding the poop-decks, 
the sailors thronging the forecastles and crow's- 
nests — all saluting, many praying, some no doubt 
weeping, all crying '^Adiosr^ How tremendous it 
all was! How much it meant! 

As a mere feat of seamanship, however, this first 
recorded voyage across the Atlantic was not con- 
siderable. The flotilla left the Canary Island of 
Gomera on September 6, 1492, and shaped a course 
westward. The winds blew steadily astern; no 
storms arose; the resources of navigation were in 
no wise taxed. Indeed, on the 16th of September 
and often afterwards, Columbus notes that *'they 
met with very temperate breezes so that there was 
great pleasure in enjoying the mornings, nothing 
being wanted but the song of nightingales. . . . 
The weather," he says, "was like April in Anda- 
lusia." 

Apprehension nevertheless did not sleep; it 
lurked. Already solemn Teneriffe had raised 
above them in greeting — mayhap in warning ! — 
its staff of fire. The needle, victim perchance of 
subtle necromancy, had begun straying from the 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 41 

pole. Grass, first in green tufts, then in fine 
masses, then in tangles and skeins with crabs en- 
meshed, that grass before which a Prince of Portu- 
gal had once turned back, was all about them. 

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 
Upon the slimy sea. 

And those winds, so balmy but so fatefully setting 
into the unknown West! Was it not all a snare 
of unseen Powers.? There were murmurs — plots, 
it is said — to seize the Admiral unawares and 
hurl him overboard. Columbus, on his part, 
laughed at the fears of the sailors and made them 
big offers of wealth. Had he not the whole of 
Cathay before him.? 

That in his mind Columbus had Asia, the coun- 
try of the Great Kaan, as in some sort a destina- 
tion, cannot well be gainsaid if we are prepared to 
yield any substantial credence to his Journal as we 
have it. According to that document, he was 
expecting, as early as the 16th of September, to 
come upon "islands" but "made the main land 
to be more distant," and thought it better to go 
at once to the continent and afterwards to the 
islands. But of the events of this voyage, his 
though it was, Columbus was not sole arbiter. 



42 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Martin Alonso Pinzon, by circumstances and 
also perhaps by agreement, was an associate; and 
in his mind, evidently, the destination was Cipangu 
or Japan. As will be recalled, he had brought from 
Rome a *'chart'* and a **book, " both of which he 
had handed to Columbus. Now in the "book" 
was this sentence: "In navigating by the medi- 
terranean Sea to the end of Spain, and thence in the 
direction where the Sun sinks between the North 
and the South, you will find a land of Sypanso 
[Cipangu] which is so fertile and so rich that by aid 
of its resources you will [be able to] subjugate both 
Africa and Europe." Furthermore, inspired by 
the "book," and also by Marco Polo, Pinzon in a 
recruiting appeal to the seamen of Palos had said: 
"Friends, come with us! Come with us on this 
voyage! Here you are in poverty. Come with us, 
for according to accounts you will find the houses 
with roofs of gold, and you will return rich and 
prosperous!" 

When, therefore, on the 25th of September, 
Martin Alonso called Columbus's attention to the 
fact that, according to a "chart" which both were 
using, the flotilla ought to be sighting "certain 
islands," we are not surprised, for it was islands, 
or at least the island of Japan, and not a mainland, 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 43 

in which the interest of Pinzon centered. And when, 
on the 7th of October, Columbus in deference to 
the wish of Pinzon actually changed direction from 
west to west-southwest; and when, on the 12th, 
land, Guanahani or Watling Island, rewarded the 
change, it was natural that both Columbus and Pin- 
zon should be convinced that they were in an archi« 
pelago of Asiatic India, with Japan not far away. 

The expedition now had traversed 1123 leagues, 
or 4492 Italian miles, from the Canaries; and yet, 
as Ferdinand Columbus informs us, 700 or 750 
leagues (3000 miles) was the distance at which the 
Admiral had told his men that he expected to find 
land. If this "land" was the Antillia-Salvagio- 
Reyella Group (West Indies or Antilles), as seems 
probable, it is represented on Behaim's globe 
(through a composite Antillia) as from 2200 to 
2500 miles west from the Canaries; and it was at 
about this distance, on and near the 25th of Sep- 
tember, that both Columbus and Pinzon began 
anxiously scanning the horizon. The fact that 
3000 miles was given out by Columbus as the 
distance to be covered before land might be looked 
for, may be explained by his wish to mislead his 
crews into the belief that they were committed to 



44 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS - 

a longer unbroken voyage than they really were. ' 
He, in fact, states repeatedly, in his Journal, that 
he kept a dual reckoning, one of actual distances 
for himself and one of minimized distances for his 
men. How he could have contrived to do this, 
with half a dozen pilots and a score or more of 
others at his elbow more competent at rating a 
ship's progress than himself, "goodness," as Lord 
Dunraven puts it, "only knows." 

A landfall, in the case of any fifteenth century 
voyage of discovery, was momentous, but espe- 
cially was it so in the case of a Spanish voyage. 
Commanders fell on their knees and gave thanks; 
crews chanted the Gloria in Excelsis Deo and 
crowded into the rigging and tops; flags were run 
up and guns were fired. So was it at Guanahani 
on October 12, 1492. Clad in armor, over which, 
true to his taste in color and to his instinct for 
effect, he had thrown the crimson robe of an Ad- 
miral of Castile, Columbus, with the furled royal 
standard grasped in his left hand, bent low to the 
earth, which he saluted. His actions were imitated 
by the captains of the Pinta and Nina, Martin 
Alonso Pinzon and his brother Vicente Yanes, who 
bore standards emblazoned each with a green cross. 
Then, rising, Columbus summoned to him the royal 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 45 

notary and the royal inspector as witnesses, un- 
furled the royal standard, drew his sword, and 
proclaimed the island the possession henceforth of 
the Crown of Spain, naming it San Salvador. 

So the day ended; but early the next morning, 
as we are told, the natives gathered on the shore in 
large numbers, and, destitute of beards themselves, 
looked with wonder on the bearded Spaniards, on 
Columbus in particular. To his beard and those 
of his men they "reached out their fingers, and 
viewed attentively the whiteness of the Spanish 
hands and faces." 

On the 28th of October the expedition discovered 
Cuba, and on the 5th of December, Hayti or 
Espafiola. Everywhere Columbus was charmed 
with the scenery. "The herbage is like that of 
April in Andalusia." Andalusia serves always as 
the standard of comparison. So pleasant are the 
songs of birds that "it seems as though a man could 
never wish to leave the place." Parrots rise in 
"flocks so dense as to conceal the sun." In Cuba 
are "palm trees differing from those in Spain and 
Guinea." As for the inhabitants of the new re- 
gions, they are "docile," "very gentle and kind," 
going "naked without arms and without law." But 
the things which make a particular appeal to the 



46 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

discoverer are five: gold, religion, spices, Cipangu, 
and Cathay. 

Gold he began inquiring about from the natives 
on the day following the landing. "I was attentive 
and took trouble to ascertain," he says, "if there 
was gold." But gold, in the Journal, is a theme 
hardly more emphasized than religion. On the 
very day of the landing Columbus writes: "I 
believe that they [the natives] would easily be 
made Christians as it appeared to me they had j 
no sect." 

He was equally attentive to any mention of j 
spices. "According as I obtain tidings of gold or 
spices, I shall settle what must be done." More- 
over it is in connection with spices that the Jour- 
nal introduces Cipangu and Cathay. Having, on 
the 7th of October, given over the search for the 
"mainland," Columbus on the 21st speaks of 
proceeding to Cipangu, which he identifies with 
Cuba because of the latter's "size and riches." 
It is better, he says, to "inspect much land until 
some very profitable country is reached, my belief 
being that it will be rich in spices." And on the 
24th he resumes: "On the spheres that I saw 
[before leaving Spain], and on the paintings of 
world-maps, Cipangu is in this region." Then. 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 47 

on the 26th of October, the subject is dropped 
with the remark: "I departed . . . for Cuba, for, 
by the signs the Lidians made of its greatness and 
of its gold and pearls, I thought that it must be the 
one — that is to say, Cipangu." 

But the mainland recurs in his thoughts; and 
on the 30th he decides, from a statement by the 
Indians, that Cuba itself is the mainland of Asia, 
with Cathay and the Great Kaan somewhere 
therein; and that he must send to the latter the 
credentials he bears from Ferdinand and Isabella. 
Accordingly, on the 2d of November, he dis- 
patches from a point on the Cuban coast his offi- 
cial interpreter, Luis de Torres, a converted Jew, 
with a party carrying "specimens of spices," to 
"ask for the King of that land." To him they are 
to deliver the credentials, and from him they are 
to inquire "concerning certain provinces, ports, 
and rivers, of which the Admiral has notice." 

Later, Columbus identified Cipangu with Hayti; 
but Cuba he consistently continued to regard as 
the mainland, peering expectantly into its bays 
and up its streams for "populous cities" such as 
the Kinsay of Marco Polo and of the world 
maps, maps like Fra Mauro's of 1457-59, which he 
"saw" before leaving Spain. Having completed 



48 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

his voyage by "finding what he sought," though 
manifestly not "populous cities," Columbus set 
sail from the eastern end of the island of Hayti for 
home on January 16, 1493. 

Two occurrences hastened his return. On No- 
vember 21, 1492, Martin Alonso Pinzon, impatient 
for the discovery of Cipangu and the realization 
of those dreams of gold on the strength of which he 
had secured enlistments at Palos, had gone off in 
the Pinta for some prospecting of his own. Then, 
on Christmas night, the Santa Maria had been 
wrecked, leaving the Admiral with only the Nina 
w^herein to continue his explorations. Thus handi- 
capped, he had been forced to build on Espanola 
(Hayti) a fortress. La Navidad, where he left 
thirty-seven of his men, and crowded into the 
Nina the remainder. 

Pinzon had rejoined the expedition on January 
6, 1493, but the Admiral was much vexed and not 
disposed to parley or linger. Nor is his vexation 
hard to understand, Columbus was the titular 
and technical head of the expedition, but in reality 
he was much the servant of his lieutenant, for 
Pinzon was a Spaniard, the friend and fellow- 
townsman of the crews, who would not have en- 
dured to see him disciplined. 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 49 

In strong contrast to the voyage out, the voyage 
back was tempestuous. Storms began on the 
12th of February and so grew in violence that on 
the 14th Columbus placed in a barrel a parchment 
inscribed with an account of his discoveries and 
committed it to the sea. But he succeeded in 
making port in the Portuguese island of Santa 
Maria, one of the Azores, whence he sailed for 
Castile. More storms delayed him, but on the 
4th of March the Nina entered the Tagus and 
anchored off Rastelo. Of the fate of the Pinta, 
meanwhile, nothing had been known since the 
14th of February, when she had disappeared run- 
ning before the wind. 

Once at anchor, and once having satisfied the 
Portuguese authorities that he was a duly accred- 
ited officer of the Spanish Marine, Columbus was 
hospitably received, granted supplies, and invited 
by King John II, the same with whom he had 
held memorable converse in 1483 or 1484, to 
visit him at Valparaiso near Lisbon. Columbus 
went with some trepidation and, according to 
Portuguese accounts, told the King that he ''had 
come from the discovery of the islands of Cipangu 
and Antillia," but made no mention of Cathay 
and the Great Kaan, or of India. ''O man of 



50 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

miserable understanding," the King is said, by 
Spaniards, to have exclaimed at the interview, 
smiting his breast, "why didst thou let an under- 
taking of such great importance go out of thine 
hands!" 

By the 15th of March the Admiral was at Palos, 
where on the evening of the same day Martin Alonso 
Pinzon likewise arrived, having brought the Pinta 
safe into port at B ay ona in Galicia. But it was a full 
month before Columbus was received by Ferdinand 
and Isabella in Barcelona, and in the meantime Pin- 
zon, already ill when he disembarked, had breathed 
his last. What light upon the great voyage to the 
Antilles might have been shed had Pinzon — force- 
ful personality that he was — survived ! 

In Sevilla where, amid much ovation, Columbus 
awaited the pleasure of the Spanish sovereigns, 
there came to him a letter, dated the 30th of 
March, addressed to "The Admiral of the Ocean 
Sea and Viceroy and Governor of the islands dis- 
covered in the Indies," and confirming what had 
previously been conditionally granted to him in the 
Capitulation and Letters Patent of April, 1492. 

If the welcome to the Admiral at Sevilla had 
been noteworthy, that which he was accorded at 
Barcelona was more noteworthy still. Throng? 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 51 

attended him, and his bodyguard was the best 
chivalry of Spain. In advance marched a group 
of some haK^dozen New World Indians and a squad 
of sailors from the Nina. The Indians wore gold 
armaments and carried spears and arrows, while 
the sailors bore aloft forty parrots of gorgeous 
plumage, besides other birds, together with rare 
plants and animals, among which not the least 
was an iguana ^yq feet long, its back bristling 
with spines. 

Ferdinand and Isabella, happy at the success of 
their adventurous protege, which no doubt they had 
scarcely expected, were augustly gracious. Seated 
under a golden canopy in the Alcazar of the Moor- 
ish Kings, they rose to greet Columbus on his 
entry, gently deprecated his lowliness in stooping 
to kiss their hands, and made him sit at their feet. 
So placed, the discoverer of America, a master of 
speech, told his tale, illustrating it with the Indians, 
the sailors, the specimens, and the gold. The 
monarchs and court then said a prayer, the choir 
of the royal chapel chanted Te Deum, and the 
ceremony closed. 

The news of the return of Columbus soon spread 
and evoked ingenious appraisals among the learned. 
"In the month of August last," as Hannibal 



52 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Januarius, an Italian gentleman from Barcelona, 
wrote to his brother in 1493: *'This great King 
[Ferdinand], at the prayer of one named Collomba, 
caused four [sic] little vessels to be equipped to 
navigate . . . upon the ocean in a straight line 
toward the west until finally the east was reached. 
The earth being round he should certainly arrive 
in the eastern regions." Also from Barcelona, on 
the 14th of May, Peter Martyr, the Horace Wal- 
pole of his day, wrote to his friend Count Tindilla: 
"A few days after [an attempted assassination of 
King Ferdinand], there returned from the West- 
ern Antipodes a certain Christopher Columbus, a 
Ligurian, who with barely three ships penetrated 
to the province which was believed to be fabu- 
lous : he returned bearing substantial proofs in the 
shape of many precious things and particularly of 
gold." Again, on the 1st of October, this time 
from Milan, Martyr wrote to the Archbishop of 
Braga: "A certain Columbus has sailed to the West- 
ern Antipodes, even as he believes to the very 
shores of India. He has discovered many islands 
beyond the eastern ocean adjoining the Indies, 
which are believed to be those of which mention 
has been made among cosmographers. I do not 
wholly deny this, although the magnitude of the 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 53 

globe seems to suggest otherwise, for there are not 
wanting those who think it but a small journey 
from the end of Spain to the shores of India." 
Finally, on January 31, 1494, our letter-writer 
addresses these words to the Archbishop of Gra- 
nada: "The King and Queen at Barcelona have 
created an Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Columbus 
returned from his most honorable charge, and they 
have admitted him to sit in their presence, which is, 
as you know, a supreme proof of benevolence and 
honor with our Sovereigns." 

But, anticipating rumors, reports, and letters, 
Columbus himself had had a word to say respect- 
ing his voyage. Writing from shipboard, on Feb- 
ruary 15, 1493, to Luis de Santangel, his stanch 
advocate with Isabella, he had declared: "When 
I reached Juana [Cuba] I followed its coast west- 
wardly and found it so large that I thought it 
might be the mainland province of Cathay." 

As a matter of fact, however, interest in this 
exploit on the part of Columbus attached itself less 
to the geographical discoveries than to the preter- 
natural creatures that lurked on the margins of the 
earth. Hannibal Januarius, our Italian acquaint- 
ance of epistolary bent, remarked to his brother. 



54 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

apropos of the Genoese navigator, that "the earth 
being round the latter should certainly arrive in 
the eastern regions." But forgetful, near the end 
of his letter, of the scientific aspects of the great 
voyage, Januarius wrote: "He [Columbus] adds 
that he has lately been in a country where men are 
born with tails." Nor was the soft impeachment 
wholly inaccurate, for, in his own shipboard letter 
to Santangel, the Admiral said: "There remains 
for me on the western side [of Cuba] two provinces 
whereto I did not go — one of which they call 
An an — where the people are born with tails." 
And in his Journal Columbus had already noted 
that "far away" there were, as he understood, 
"men with one eye, and others with dogs' noses 
who were cannibals." But he was wary in state- 
ment, for in the Santangel letter he concluded the 
subject by remarking that "down to the present 
[he had] not found in those islands [the Antilles] 
any monstrous men as many expected." 

With regard to mermaids it was different. These 
the Admiral had himself seen, both on the coast of 
Guinea and in the Antilles. The Antillean sirens, 
as he had seen them, were three in number. " They 
rose well out of the sea" but were "not so beauti- 
ful as painted, though having to some extent the 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 55 

human face." And Columbus believed in Ama- 
zons. He had never beheld any, but had been told 
they lived in the island of Martinino [Martinique], 
and he had meant to stop there on his way home to 
secure a few to exhibit, along with his Indians, to 
Ferdinand and Isabella. 

His half-dozen Indians, his forty gorgeous 
parrots, his spined iguana, and his gold — of the 
latter not more than enough to whet a royal appe- 
tite — together with stories about "mermaids," 
and natives who burnt a queer herb, "tabacos," 
were about all in the way of wonders, ocular or 
auricular, that Columbus had brought home with 
him. The great thing, the super-epochmaking 
thing, though not yet understood so to be, was 
the voyage itself; the voyage itself and the will to 
make it. This, too, largely irrespective of whether 
the objective was in some sort Asia, or simply a 
Ba,rataria, an island to govern. 

Besides the voyage of 1492, Columbus made 
three other voyages. On the second, which lasted 
from September, 1493, to March, 1496, and was 
undertaken with seventeen ships and fifteen hun- 
dred men, including his brother Diego, he dis- 
covered Porto Rico and Jamaica; learned that his 
rolony of 1492 at La Navidad had been totally 



56 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS Wi 

destroyed; and founded in its stead, in Espanola ' 
(Hayti), the ambitious settlement of Isabella. He 
also visited Cuba and compelled his entire ships' 
company to make oath that they believed it to be 
the mainland, the Alpha or beginning of the Indies. 
The third voyage of Columbus from January, 
1498, to October, 1500, was undertaken with six 
ships and two hundred men, to test the opinion of | 
Eang John II of Portugal that to the south there | 
lay a continent; and the opinion was sustained, 
for the voyage was signalized by the Admiral's 
greatest achievement next to that of 1492 — the 
discovery of the mainland of America, at Paria, 
near the mouths of the Orinoco. Mistaking the 
land at first for an insular body, he soon came to 
realize its true character. As early as July, 1498, 
he wrote: "It is certain that the discovery of this 
land in this place is as great a miracle as the dis- 
covery on the first voyage"; and in August he thus 
confided to his Journal: "I am convinced that 
this is the mainland, and very large, of which no 
knowledge has been had until now." Later, in 
October, when writing to Ferdinand and Isabella, 
he said: "I think that if the river mentioned [the 
Orinoco] does not proceed from the terrestrial 
paradise, it comes from an immense tract of land 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 57 

in the South, of which no knowledge has been 
hitherto obtained." 

But meanwhile in Espaiiola conditions, social, 
political, and economical, had become chaotic; and 
in 1500 the Admiral was superseded as Governor 
by Francisco de Bobadilla, who, stretching his au- 
thority, arrested his predecessor, together with his 
brother Bartholomew and his brother Diego, and 
sent them to Spain in fetters. Promptly released 
by the sovereigns, Columbus, after an affecting and 
(on his part, we may be sure) eloquent scene with 
Isabella, was released with the promise of a res- 
toration of his privileges as defined in the Capitu- 
lation and Letters Patent and was placed, so to 
speak, on waiting orders. 

By 1501 the Admiral had conceived the project 
of a fourth voyage, to be made with four caravels 
and one hundred and fifty men; but before setting 
out, in 1502, he deposited his papers in safe keep- 
ing, drafted his will, and wrote to the Bank of St. . 
George in Genoa, offering a tenth of his yearly 
income for the reduction of food taxes in that 
commonwealth. This last maritime enterprise 
was shared by his brother Bartholomew and his 
son Ferdinand, now a lad of fourteen, and had for 
its main motive the disclosure of some avenue by 



58 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

which Asia — that part of it where lay the riches 
— might be attained. In short, Columbus had 
now come to realize that thus far he had failed to 
reach the country of the Great Kaan. He felt that 
he must have reached Asia, but at a point lying 
to the south of Cathay and India; and, as for 
flanking the difficulty by penetrating to the south 
yet further, an immense tract of land, "a main- 
land," interposed. Still, in the interposing mass 
there must be a narrow place, and through this 
a strait, for the currents that set westward from 
Jamaica so indicated. It is to be observed that 
on this voyage he pretty much ceased to concern 
himself with Cipangu, so manifestly futile were all 
attempts to identify it with Espanola. 

For a full year Columbus skirted the coast of 
Central America from Cariari in Nicaragua to the 
site of Puerto Bello in Panama, hearing of "pepper " 
and of people in "rich clothing, " of commerce, and 
of the "river Ganges." In November, 1504, he 
returned to Spain, where Isabella, his patroness, 
was at this time on her death-bed, so that his 
many letters to the Spanish Court remained un- 
acknowledged. 

With some premonition of his own demise, 
Columbus now busied himself with his last will, 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 59 

charging his son Diego to provide for the main- 
tenance of Beatrix, **a person to whom I am under 
great obligations; and let this," he continues, "be 
done for the discharge of my conscience, for it 
weighs heavy on my soul." On May 20, 1506, at 
Valladolid, broken, discouraged, and well-nigh 
forgotten even in Spain, the discoverer of America, 
Viceroy of the Indies, and Admiral of the Ocean, 
breathed his last. 

The discoverer of America strikingly illustrates 
the aphorism that the world's great men, so far 
from having commonly been men of learning, have 
often been but glorified enthusiasts. To Columbus 
the South, the upper coast of South America at 
the mouths of the Orinoco, meant the Terrestrial 
Paradise of Sir John Mandeville, a spot where the 
earth's surface ceasing to be rounded was pinched 
into a stem, on the summit of which the Paradise 
rested, and down the sides of which rolled such 
mighty streams as the Orinoco. It meant also the 
Golden Chersonese of Ptolemy (Malay Peninsula), 
where in one year Solomon gathered 656 quintals 
of gold and all manner of precious stones. It was 
because of this South, so gravely misconceived by 
him geographically, that Columbus, anticipating 



60 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

the project of Magellan, entertained at the end of 
his second voyage the idea of returning to Europe 
by way of the Indian Ocean. "If he had had an 
abundance of provisions, " says his son Ferdinand, 
"he would not have returned to Spain except by 
way of the East." 

To say of Columbus that he was not conspicuous 
for learning is but to repeat that his chief powers 
were moral not intellectual. Patience, endurance, 
tenacity, energy, and will — these, despite his igno- 
rance, made him great. Cupidity and vanity, en- 
tailing boastfulness and craft, we have noted as 
his chief weaknesses; but as to cupidity the record 
is perhaps less vulnerable than it is at times rep- 
resented. Throughout the years 1500 to 1504, the 
years preceding and including his fourth voyage, 
gold was to Columbus indeed a thing infinitely 
precious — precious in itself but far more so as 
the indispensable justification of his life and work. 
Then it is that we find him writing: "Gold is 
most excellent, gold is treasure, and he who pos- 
sesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and 
succeeds in helping souls into Paradise." 

Columbus was religious, formally and ceremo- 
niously, albeit sincerely, religious. From an early 
date — in fact, while at Granada before his first 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 61 

voyage — he had embraced the idea of rescuing 
the Holy Sepulcher from the Infidel. To this end 
he was resolved, or so deemed himself, to devote 
his profits from the Indies. And withal he was 
eloquent. He waxed eloquent over the Holy 
Sepulcher; and when, after his third voyage, he 
was put upon waiting orders, alike to the impair- 
ment of his revenues and the wounding of his 
pride, he waxed eloquent over that injustice. "I 
have arrived at and am in such a condition," he 
writes in 1500, "that there is no person so vile 
but thinks he may insult me; he shall be reckoned 
in the world as valor itself who is courageous 
enough to consent to it. If I were to steal the In- 
dies, or the land which lies toward them, of which 
I am now speaking, from the altar of St. Peter and 
give them to the Moors, they could not show 
greater enmity toward me in Spain. Who would 
believe such a thing where there was always so 
much magnanimity .f^ ... I undertook a fresh 
voyage to the new heaven and earth which up 
to that time had remained hidden; and if it is 
not held there in esteem like the other voyages 
to the Indies, that is no wonder because it came 
to be looked upon as my work." 

His yet more famous letter, written in 1503 from 



62 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Jamaica, on his fourth voyage, is the cry of a Wol- 
sey left naked to his enemies: "I was twenty- 
eight years old when I came into your Highnesses' 
service, and now I have not a hair upon me that 
is not gray; my body is infirm, and all that was 
left to me, as well as to my brothers, has been 
taken away and sold even to the frock that I wore, 
to my great dishonor. ... I implore your High- 
nesses to forgive my complaints. I am indeed in 
as ruined a condition as I have related. Hither- 
to I have wept over others — may Heaven now 
have mercy upon me, and may the earth weep 
over me. . . . Weep for me, whoever has charity, 
truth, and justice!" 

In the spirit of that charity, truth, and justice 
which Columbus here invokes, let it be said that, 
whatever his deflections from straightforwardness, 
he was not alone therein in his age or profession. 
Martin Behaim, Sebastian Cabot, and Amerigo 
Vespucci — not one of them as a navigator dealt 
honestly with his own age or with posterity. But, 
points of character aside, what in the case of the 
great Genoese most excites wonder, is not that 
he discovered America but that America should 
have remained to be discovered by him. The 
expedition of Telles, or that of Dulmo and Estreito 



COLUMBUS AND NEW LANDS 63 

(Behaim), might well have reached the western 
continent. As early as 1500, indeed, Vicente 
Yanes Pinzon for Spain, and Pedralvarez Cabral 
for Portugal, touched the coast of South America. 
Furthermore, as the region which was discovered 
by Columbus perpetuates, in the name Antilles, 
the mythical island of Antillia, so the region dis- 
covered by Pinzon and Cabral perpetuates in the 
name Brazil the mythical island of Brazil. 



1 



CHAPTER III 

BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 

. . . when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
Looked at each other with a wild surmise — 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 

Keats: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. 

In his Espanola letter of October, 1498, to the Span- 
ish sovereigns, Columbus told them two things: 
first, that he had discovered the Earthly Para- 
dise, which being on the top of the stem of the 
earth was "near heaven" and unattainable "save 
by God's permission"; and, second, that at Paria 
he had found pearls. The latter announcement 
was the moving one, and in 1499 two private ex- 
peditions set forth almost simultaneously to the 
Pearl Coast, one piloted by Juan de la Cosa but 
commanded by Alonso de Ojeda, a knight of truly 
Spanish audacity, companion of Columbus in 
1493; and the other commanded by Pero Alonso 
Nifio, one of Columbus's pilots in 1493 and 1498. 

64 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 65 

The voyage of Nino, so far as the gathering of 
riches was concerned, proved a success quite be- 
yond anything achieved by Columbus, for it was 
rewarded by quantities of pearls. Ojeda was less 
successful in finding pearls, but he brought away 
some two hundred natives to be sold as slaves. 
In 1508 he was made Governor of the district of 
Uraba, which extended from the Darien (Atrato) 
River eastward to the GuK of Venezuela and was 
called Castilla del Oro. West of Uraba, as far as 
Cape Gracias a Dios in Honduras, the coast, under 
the appellation of Veragua, was in 1508 assigned 
for government to Diego de Nicuesa, a rich and 
accomplished planter of Espanola. 

The significance of Ojeda and Nicuesa, however, 
lies not so much in themselves as in their three 
associates — Vespucci, Balboa, and Pizarro; es- 
pecially in Balboa, the true precursor of Cortes, 
with whom in a variety of respects he is not un- 
worthy to be compared. As for Vespucci and 
Pizarro, the latter we shall meet presently, and the 
former need not long detain us. He was, be it said, 
an alert Florentine who as contractor's clerk had 
seen to the outfitting of the ships for the second 
voyage of Columbus, and who had accompanied 
Ojeda on his pearl-seeking voyage of 1499. He 



66 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

had made three other transatlantic voyages, the 
third of which, by his Hterary handhng of it in (I 
letters printed in Latin in 1504 and 1507 (the 
former under the title of Mundus Novus) had 
so estabhshed his fame that in 1507 Mundus No- 
vus (South America) was beginning to be called 
Amerige — Americ's land or America. \ 

But to revert to Balboa. Just as from the third 
voyage of Columbus, renowned for its pearls, there 
resulted the voyage of Ojeda, bringing to the main- 
land of the Indies Vespucci, so in 1500 there re- 
sulted the voyage of Rodrigo de Bastidas, bringing 
Vasco Nunez de Balboa. Of Balboa prior to this 
time we know only that he was a good ** sword- 
player," born in 1474 or 1475 in Estremadura. 
Luckless at sea with Bastidas, he had resorted to 
farming in Espanola, and when, in November, 
1509, Ojeda and Nicuesa started for their prov- 
inces, he was restless to accompany one or other. 
Debt kept him back, but he was resourceful, and 
in September, 1510, when Ojeda's lieutenant, 
Martin Fernandez de Enciso, prepared to follow 
his commander with supplies, Balboa, it is said, 
contrived to get himself smuggled on shipboard 
in a provision cask. 

On the Venezuelan coast, near the present 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 67 

Cartagena — for it was here that Enciso landed — 
Balboa encountered Francisco Pizarro, a dutiful 
soldier under Ojeda, with a boatload of Ojeda's 
men. From him it was learned that Ojeda, having 
lost De la Cosa in a fight, and being himself seri- 
ously wounded, had founded the refuge of San 
Sebastian, and then had departed for Espanola for 
succor. His colonists, meantime, desperate with 
hunger, were roaming hither and yon in quest of 
food. All straightway betook themselves to San 
Sebastian, but only to find it burned. The ques- 
tion then arose as to what should be done in cir- 
cumstances so adverse. 

In answer, up spoke Balboa. To the west of the 
Gulf of Uraba was a region (Darien) abounding in 
food; this he knew from having already visited 
it under Bastidas. There, moreover, the Indians 
used no poisoned arrows, missiles which had been 
the undoing of the headlong Ojeda. Balboa was 
of good stature, of knightly bearing, and of frank 
address, and his words took effect. Ojeda's colony 
transferred itself to Darien, where it founded Santa 
Maria la Antigua del Darien, and — being thus 
within the country which pertained to Nicuesa — 
promptly on Balboa's suggestion deposed Enciso 
and chose as alcaldes or judges Balboa and 



68 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Martin Zamudio; and, as regidor or alderman, a 
young nobleman, Juan de Valdivia. 

Where, though, in the meantime was Nicuesa? 
Ojeda had reached New Andalusia with three 
hundred men and four small ships. Nicuesa had 
appeared off Castilla del Oro with nearly seven 
hundred men and five ships of large size, and was 
now sailing to and fro looking for Columbus's Vera- 
gua, the Golden Chersonese, but to no issue except 
the loss of ships and the drowning and starving 
of his men. Marooned at length upon desert sand, 
Nicuesa himself and sixty half-naked followers 
embraced despair. Some muttered, some raved, 
some in fierce irony laughed aloud. "A jest it was, 
ha! ha! a merry jest, to adventure life for gold, 
for lands, and to rule one's fellows!" Nicuesa 
was finally found and brought back to Darien 
by his lieutenant. But the colony, which was orig- 
inally Ojeda's, distrusted Nicuesa and in March, 
1511, putting him on board a leaky brigantine, 
dispatched him to Spain, and that was the last 
that they or any one heard of this overbearing 
commander. 

At this time Diego Columbus, elder son of Chris- 
topher Columbus, presided over the Antilles as 
Governor and Admiral, with residence in Espanola. 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 69 

On the continent of America (Tierra Firme), which 
now comprised Central America and Mundus 
Novus (South America), no one presided. Oppor- 
tunity, therefore, called for a ruler in Tierra Firme 
and not in vain, for there was a man to respond — 
by name Vasco Nunez de Balboa. All he lacked 
was legal authorization. To obtain this, being so 
far from Spain, he must do mighty deeds, make 
himself potent and indispensable. And this he set 
himself to do. First, he deported Enciso to Spain, 
sending with him, to offset a possible misrepresen- 
tation of his action, the alcalde Zamudio. In the 
same ship, but commissioned to stop in Espanola 
and solicit the favor of Don Diego, he sent Valdivia. 
Don Diego proved malleable and soon appointed 
Balboa his lieutenant. 

Thereupon Balboa shaped a career for conquest 
and discovery — a career in which two points that 
stand out are his recognition of Pizarro and his 
employment of blooded dogs. Francisco Pizarro 
was an Estremaduran, like Balboa, and of about the 
same age. He was ambitious, yet peculiar from 
the fact that in a period of restless competition 
he was content to bide, to serve, and to be ever 
dutiful. With regard to the dogs, they were no new 
thing with the Spaniard. Bartholomew Columbus 



70 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

had used them in Espanola, though not quite as 
Balboa was to use them in Darien. Their breed 
was of the best, and their fangs were deadly, but 
they were sagacious and under firm discipline. 

Gold was Balboa's object but the prime im- 
mediate requisite was food. Careta, cacique of 
Cueva, a district to the west of Santa Maria, 
possessed both gold and food, and he possessed, 
furthermore, a daughter. Balboa attacked the 
village of Careta and carried the cacique and his 
attractive daughter prisoners to Santa Maria. 
Here, in turn, the captor himself was made cap- 
tive, for he fell in love with the daughter, and 
formed with Careta an alliance against that ca- 
cique's enemy, Ponca. 

To the west of Careta lay a rich and populous 
country of the Atlantic seaboard, ruled by a 
cacique, Comogre, who, to the amazement of the 
Spaniards, occupied a house constructed of posts 
and stone, with carved woodwork. An under- 
standing with Comogre became practicable 
through the understanding with Careta, and 
momentous did it prove. It made of Balboa 
a discoverer, a world discoverer, the discoverer 
of the South Sea or Pacific Ocean — an achieve- 
ment which, had it only come a little sooner, would 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 71 

in all probability have brought with it the con- 
quest of Peru. 

Comogre had seven sons, one of whom, Paneiaco, 
was of marked intelligence. From him Balboa 
learned of a cacique dwelling beyond a high sierra 
on the Pacific side of the Isthmus of Darien and 
possessed withal of much gold. This gold Balboa 
resolved to see — the "baskets full," the "bags 
full," the large "vessels" out of which the people 
ate and drank. And he would see also the new 
strange waters beyond the sierra, where, according 
to report, were ships with sails and oars but little 
less in size than those of the Spaniards themselves. 
The difficulty confronting Balboa was that such 
an adventure required many men, all seasoned 
and well equipped — a thousand, Paneiaco said, — 
whereas the Spaniard had but a few hundred, and 
these meager for lack of food. 

So pressing, indeed, was the demand for food in 
Darien that in January, 1512, Valdivia, back from 
Espanola, was again sent forth, this time expressly 
for provisions and to carry to Diego Columbus a 
letter telling of the great southward-lying sea and 
imploring the thousand men necessary for the 
seizure of its golden littoral. Nor was this all, for 
Balboa himself made an incursion into the country 



72 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

of the cacique Dabaiba — a country not only by 
report an El Dorado but, what was more, one 
known to be stocked abundantly with grain. 

Time sped and it now was October, 1512. Food 
had again run low, and men and equipment were 
as scarce as before. Valdivia had failed to return, 
nor had Espaiiola been otherwise heard from. But 
the determination of Balboa to establish himself 
in power by a successful South Sea venture re- 
mained unshaken. Commissioners were sent to 
Spain to unfold the situation to the King and to 
solicit aid of him directly. Hardly had they gone 
when two ships arrived from Diego Columbus 
bringing provisions and one hundred and fifty 
men. But they brought something even more 
important, and that was news — news from Spain. 
Zamudio wrote that, roused by Enciso's recital 
of the wrongs suffered by Nicuesa, King Ferdi- 
nand had ordered, first, that Balboa be brought 
home under criminal indictment; and, second, 
that Enciso himself be granted indemnification. 
Presumably Zamudio wrote also of a rumor 
that the King had in mind to appoint a Governor 
for Darien. 

At any rate Balboa deemed it imperative to try 
to gain personally the royal ear, and on January 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 73 

20, 1513, he addressed to Ferdinand his celebrated 
letter of exculpation, description, and appeal : 

I desire to give an account to your most Royal Highness 
of the great secrets and marvelous riches of this land 
of which God has made your most Royal Highness the 
Lord, and me the discoverer before any other. . . . 
That which is to be found down this coast to the west- 
ward is the province called Careta, which is twenty 
leagues distant. . . . Further down the coast, at a 
distance of forty leagues from this city [Santa Maria], 
and twelve leagues inland, there is a cacique called 
Comogre. ... In the mountains [to the southward] 
there are certain caciques who have great quantities 
of gold in their houses. It is said these caciques store 
their gold in barbacoas like maize, because it is so abun- 
dant that they do not care to keep it in baskets; that all 
the rivers of these mountains contain gold; and that 
they have very large lumps in great abundance. . . . 
I, Sire, have myself been very near these mountains, 
within a day's journey, but I did not reach them because 
I was unable to do so, owing to the want of men. . . . 
Beyond these mountains the country is very flat toward 
the south, and the Indians say that the other sea is at a 
distance of three days' journey. . . . They say that 
the people of the other coast are very good and well 
mannered ; and I am told that the other sea is very good 
for canoe navigation, for that it is always smooth, and 
never rough like the sea on this side, according to the 
Indians. I believe that there are many islands in that 
sea. They say that there are many large pearls, and 
that the caciques have baskets of them. ... It is a 



74 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

most astonishing thing and without equal, that our Lord 
has made you the lord of this land. 



Then he asked for a thousand men from Es- 
paiiola; for materials for the building of small ships 
— "pitch, nails, ropes and sails"; for "master 
shipwrights" and for arms — "200 crossbows with 
very strong stays and fittings and with long ranges, 
two dozen good handguns of light metal to weigh 
not more than twenty-five to thirty pounds"; and 
for "good powder." 

None of Balboa's demands, however, were to be 
granted. Indeed, by the time his commissioners 
reached Spain in May, 1513, it is probable that the 
decision had been made to supersede him. Of this, 
as we have seen, he had received intimation, and, 
with or without men and munitions, he must act. 
Upon his action depended everything: his fame, 
his fortune, and his life. 

Balboa set forth on September 6, 1513, from 
Careta's country (Caledonia Bay) directly south- 
ward across the Isthmus of Darien to the Gulf 
of San Miguel. With him he took one hundred 
and ninety Spaniards. He took, also, hundreds of 
Indian slaves as attendants and burden bearers. 
Careta's daughter was still his spouse, and through 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 75 

this fortunate connection he obtained provisions 
and guides. The arms of his men were the usual 
swords, crossbows, and arquebuses; but more for- 
midable than all other means of foray were the 
dogs, the bloodhounds. 

The distance to be traversed was not great — 
about forty-five miles — but the obstacles were as 
formidable as the distance was trifling. A cacique 
named Quarequa proved the most redoubtable foe, 
and fell upon the Spaniards with a confident and 
yelling host. He was, however, quickly put to 
flight by the discharges from the crossbows and 
arquebuses; and after the fleeing men leaped the 
dogs. Then, drawing their swords, the Spaniards 
(according to Peter Martyr) made bloody havoc, 
''hewing from one an arme, from another a legge, 
from him a buttocke, from another a shoulder, 
and from some the necke from the bodie at one 
stroke." 

The country at first was a succession of streams 
and swamps, screened by interlacing vines and 
creepers, the home of gorgeous flowers and brilliant 
birds, but no less the dwelling-place of countless 
chattering monkeys and inconvenient reptiles. 
Everywhere stretched forests of trees, stupendous, 
dark, and so festooned as to be almost impenetrable 



76 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

even to the ax. At length the journey was over. 
On the 25th of September, Balboa was at the base 
of an elevation which his guides told him looked 
upon the, sea of the south — the Mar del Sur, as 
the Spaniards long henceforth were to call it. 
Some sixty-six or sixty-seven men only were equal 
to the ascent. With these Balboa clambered to a 
point near the summit. Bidding them pause, the 
ambitious explorer went " himself e," says Peter 
Martyr, *' alone to the toppe." Here he looked 
long and prayed; then he beckoned to his men, who 
gathered about him and stared at the Pacific. 

Among the number thus silent upon a peak in 
Darien was Francisco Pizarro. To him the situa- 
tion was a congenial one. Duty had been per- 
formed and there was no need for utterance. But 
what were his thoughts.^^ In the "golden vessels" 
said to be used by Tubanama, did he surmise 
anything of Peru.^^ Quite likely not. Still, distant 
regions of a new civilization were now and again 
heard of in Darien. Once a refugee from "the 
great landes farre towarde the West" came upon a 
Spanish official reading, and, starting with surprise, 
exclaimed: "You, also, have books!" 

But this by the way. Pizarro, the dutiful cap- 
tain, was now straightway sent forward by Balboa 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 77 

to discover the shore of the sea they had gazed 
upon, and on September 29, 1513 — St. Michael's 
day — Balboa himself, with drawn sword and 
uplifted banner, advanced to meet the tide. They 
stood facing a gulf, and in honor of the day they 
named it San Miguel. And here there came to 
the Spaniards an unmistakable intimation of Peru. 
Tumaco, cacique of one of the gulf tribes, replying 
to questions by Balboa as to the extent of this new 
coast, told him that the mainland extended to 
the south without end, and that far in that direc- 
tion dwelt a nation fabulously rich, who sailed the 
ocean in ships and used beasts of burden. To illus- 
trate the beasts, he formed from clay the figure of 
the llama, which seemed a kind of camel. "This," 
says Herrera, the Spanish historian, *'was the 
second intimation Vasco Nunez [and we may add 
Francisco Pizarro] had of Peru." 

In 1513 Darien was still to explorers, as it had 
been to Columbus, the Malay Peninsula, the 
Golden Chersonese, the approach to India. "It is 
thought," notes the indefatigable Martyr, "that 
not far from the colony of San Miguel lies the 
country where the fruitfulnesse of spice beginneth." 
To dispel this illusion there was required the voy- 



78 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

age of Magellan, a voyage not merely to America 
but through America and beyond it. Prior to the 
time of this voyage in 1519-1522, America was 
thought of only as a part of the continent of Asia. 
Magellan detached America and gave it an inde- 
pendent existence. ' 

But at the time of the discovery of the South 
Sea itself Columbus's idea of America as a land 
appurtenant and subsidiary to Asia prevailed, and 
had Balboa reached Peru or Mexico he would have 
believed himself in India. Even by Cortes, Mexico 
was thought to be the Golden Chersonese. 

After discovering the Gulf of San Miguel and 
finding Isla Rica, rich in pearls, Balboa turned 
northward and reached Santa Maria on January 
19, 1514. Here the whole people welcomed him 
and eagerly viewed his treasure. For once in the 

^ Nearly two years after the discovery of America it became neces- 
sary to adjust the claims of Spain and Portugal to territories in the 
West, and, as a result of negotiations, a line was fixed by the Treaty of 
Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, bisecting the earth at 370 leagues west of 
the Cape Verde Islands. To the east of this line, what might be found 
was to belong to Portugal; to the west of it, to Spain. It was the idea 
of Magellan, sailing in the service of Spain, as it had been that of 
Columbus, that the Spice Islands and China could be reached by way 
of the west; but it was not his idea that Asia had been found in 
America. He expected to pass through America by an interoceanic 
strait and to gain the Spice Islands somewhere in the South Sea 
beyond. 



BALBOA AND THE PACEFIC 79 

Indies, however, treasure to the Spaniards was a 
thing of secondary account. The new sea was 
what these men cared about. The Mar del Sur — 
what of it.'^ From Darien Balboa dispatched Pedro 
de Arbolancha as a special messenger to Ferdinand 
with the great news. And, as typical of the new sea 
and of the auriferous realms whereto supposedly it 
was tributary, he entrusted to his messenger by way 
of gift for the King not merely gold but two hundred 
lustrous pearls, the fruit of the waters of this great 
southern sea. 

But if tales of wealth in the West had given to 
Balboa his rise, similar tales were to contribute to 
his fall. A story gained currency that in Darien 
the natives were accustomed "to fish for gold with 
nets." The prospect of such fishing appealed with 
special force to an elderly gentleman of Segovia — 
Pedro Arias de Avila; and, as Balboa was to be 
displaced, and Arias (or Pedrarias as he is known) 
had money and friends, he was made Governor 
with jurisdiction reaching from the Gulf of Mara- 
caibo to Cape Gracias a Dios. 

The expedition of Pedrarias set sail from San 
Lucar on April 11, 1514. Prior to this time one 
of the greatest expeditions to leave Spain for 
the Indies had been the second commanded by 



80 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS ^ 

Columbus, which had sailed from Cadiz in 1493. In 
point of eminence, however, the names connected 
with the expedition of Pedrarias outshone those of 
its early predecessor in high degree. There were, 
for example, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, who 
together with Las Casas had beheld the triumph 
of Columbus after his first voyage; Francisco Vas- 
quez Coronado de Valdes, Quixotic and chivalric 
seeker after the Seven Cities of Cibola; Hernando 
de Soto, discoverer of the Mississippi; and Bernal 
Diaz del Castillo, companion-to-be of Cortes and 
rugged chronicler of his deeds. 

Many adventurers, some two thousand men who 
were anxious to go, had to be left behind for want 
of room. Those taken numbered about fifteen 
hundred, and the show they made was brilliant 
enough. Largely they were young nobles and 
gentlemen who had expected to follow Gonsalvo 
de Cordoba to the Itahan wars, and they came 
wearing their silks and brocades and provided with 
gleaming armor for which they had gone heavily 
into debt. "Upon the imagination of such," 
writes Washington Irving, "the very idea of 
an unknown sea and splendid empire broke with 
the vague wonders of an Arabian tale." Finally, 
Pedrarias brought with him his wife, the resolute 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 81 

Isabel de Bobadilla, and a bishop for Darien — 
the first prelate of Tierra Firme — Juan de Que- 
vedo. Both the lady and the bishop, it is worthy 
to be remarked, fell under the spell of the gallan- 
try of Vasco Nunez de Balboa. 

As for Pedrarias himself, he was skilKul with 
the lance and had fought against the Portuguese 
and the Moors, but was now elderly and somewhat 
infirm. In temper he was arbitrary and wily. 
Sir Arthur Helps deems him "a suspicious, fiery, 
arbitrary old man"; an epigrammatic American 
thinks he had a "swarthy soul"; and even John 
Fiske pronounces him **a green-eyed, pitiless, 
perfidious old wretch." His first business was to 
arrest Balboa and bring him to trial for misdeeds 
against Enciso and Nicuesa; but the charges fell 
flat, save that Enciso, who had been given office 
under Pedrarias, was awarded civil damages for 
loss of property. 

Then for a period Balboa was ignored, and the 
followers of Pedrarias, mad for gold, were let loose 
upon the Isthmus. Between June 30, 1514, and 
January, 1517, a dozen expeditions, sent ostensibly 
to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific, 
ravaged the country. The cruelties inflicted up- 
on the natives were monstrous. "Some," says 



82 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Oviedo, "were roasted, others were mangled by 
dogs, others were hanged." Driven to desperation, 
the Indians at length turned upon their persecu- 
tors. Spaniards when caught were not only slain 
but were tortured to death. Legs and arms were 
severed by sharp stones, or the captive was bound 
and gagged and molten gold was poured down 
his throat, the Indians meanwhile in mockery 
bidding the helpless Christians, "Eat, eat, and 
take your fill !" 

On leaving his ships, Pedrarias had sought to 
impress the Darien settlers with his might and 
magnificence. But the silken and brocaded lords 
and gentlemen who so largely constituted his 
retinue had not turned out well. Disease and 
famine had fast laid hold upon them, forcing them 
to barter scarlet tunics for corn or to feed on 
herbage or to drop exhausted in the wilderness 
until "their souls deserted them" — full seven 
hundred of them. 

Still these untoward circumstances, bad as they 
were, were not what exasperated Pedrarias most. 
At his side — inactive, but observing, cogitative, 
and critical — stood Balboa, whom nothing es- 
caped. Writing to the King on October 16, 1515, 
Balboa, with a touch of the style of Mark Antony, 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 83 

describes the Governor as "an honorable man," 
but one who "takes little heed of the interest of 
your Majesty, and one in whom reigns all the 
envy and avarice in the world." Alluding to 
the cruelties to the Indians, he calls them "the 
greatest ever heard of in Arabian or Christian 
country," and says that whereas these Indians 
"formerly were as sheep, now they are as fierce 
as wolves." 

Had Pedrarias been less unsuccessful in govern- 
ing than he was, no single jurisdiction could have 
continued to hold both him and Vasco Nunez de 
Balboa. They were incompatible beings, of whom 
one must go down before the other. How true 
this was became apparent when, early in 1515, the 
full strength of Pedrarias 's resentment was evoked 
through jealousy. 

Balboa's messenger, Arbolancha, who had been 
sent to report to Ferdinand the discovery of the 
South Sea, had reached Spain but shortly after the 
departure of Pedrarias. With his gold, his pearls, 
and his magic tales of Balboa's preemption of the 
realms of Ophir, Arbolancha quite won over Fer- 
dinand, especially as Balboa had cost the Crown 
nothing, whereas Pedrarias had cost it much. 
Balboa was thereupon created Adelantado of the 



84 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

South Sea and Captain-General of Cueva and 
Panama under the nominal supervision of Pe- 
drarias as Governor of Darien. The Governor 
well knew that an adelantadoship, though techni- 
cally a lieutenancy, was in reality a provincial 
governorship — a kind of proconsulship — and 
something which, in the hands of a Balboa, might 
easily be transformed into a position of indepen- 
dent power. 

To Pedrarias two courses lay open. One was 
to forestall the new Adelantado by going to the 
Pacific seaboard himself. The other was to insti- 
tute against him further public proceedings during 
the pendency of which his commission might be 
withheld. Emphasizing the first course, Pedrarias 
sent Gaspar de Morales and Francisco Pizarro to 
the west shore of the Gulf of San Miguel to seize 
the Pearl Islands; and he sent yet farther west an 
expedition which reached the peninsula of Parita. 
He in person founded Ada on the Atlantic coast 
near the site of the subsequent Caledonia Harbor, 
and, through Gaspar de Espinosa, alcalde mayor 
or chief judge of Darien, penetrated to the extreme 
west as far as the Gulf of Nicoya in the present 
Costa Rica. 

The second course against Balboa, the with- 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 85 

holding of his commission, proved wholly a failure, 
for the Bishop of Darien, to whom it was of ne- 
cessity disclosed, denounced it roundly in public 
from the pulpit. 

Events now moved apace. Balboa, after the 
interview of Arbolancha with Ferdinand, received 
a letter from the King, written in August, 1514, 
informing him that Pedrarias had been instructed 
to "treat him well." With this assurance Balboa 
had therefore resolved to make his adelantadoship 
a reality by exploring the coasts of the South Sea 
regardless of the Governor. 

By secretly obtaining supplies from Cuba, Bal- 
boa nearly brought about his own downfall, but the 
situation was retrieved by Bishop Quevedo, who 
persuaded Pedrarias (very possibly Dona Isabel 
was here a factor) to become reconciled and give 
to the courtly Balboa his eldest daughter. Dona 
Maria, in betrothal. The arrangement, whatever 
may have been the motive of Pedrarias in coun- 
tenancing it, in nowise changed his feeling toward 
Balboa — an instinctive jealousy and suspicion. 
To Balboa, on the contrary, the arrangement w^as 
not unpleasing. He still loved Careta's daughter; 
Dofia Maria was at school in Spain; his marriage 
with her could be deferred. Pedrarias meanwhile 



86 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

could not well oppose the passage of the Adelan- 
tado, his prospective son-in-law, to the latter' s 
province on the Pacific. 

What Balboa needed was ships. These, to the 
number of four brigantines, he built from the 
forest on the northern side of the sierra below 
Ada; and thousands of impressed Indians carried 
them in sections over the ridge to the waters of the 
river Balsas (Sabana.^), which flowed into the Gulf 
of San Miguel. But the timbers proved rotten, 
and the work of shipbuilding had to be done all 
over again. Done, however, it finally was; and 
Balboa stood exultant on the beach of Isla Rica 
gazing seaward. The nights at this season were 
clear, we are told, and a certain great star rode in 
the heavens above. Now it seems that just after 
Balboa's discovery of the Pacific, a Venetian 
traveling astrologer who was in Santa Maria had 
pointed out to him the star, telling him that when 
it attained in the heavens a definite point he was 
to beware, as mortal peril faced him. The crisis 
safely passed, he would be Fortune's child — "the 
greatest lord and captain in all the Indies, and 
withal the richest." Turning to friends who were 
with him, Balboa on one occasion spoke of the star 
and ridiculed the astrologer. "Have I not," he 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 87 

said, "three hundred men and four ships and the 
countenance, officially, of Pedrarias ! " 

From time to time news had reached Darien that, 
as Balboa had been superseded by Pedrarias, so the 
latter was to be superseded by Lope de Sosa, act- 
ing Governor of the Canary Islands. Such news, 
now that Balboa was on working terms with Pe- 
drarias, was not welcome to him, for a change in 
governors might cause him delay. So the Adelan- 
tado remarked to his notary that it would be well 
to send to Ada to ascertain whether Lope de 
Sosa were yet arrived. If he were, then Balboa 
could not put to sea too soon. If he were not, some 
much needed iron and pitch might be obtained, 
and the preparations could be continued. Four 
men composed the party to go to Ada: Andres 
Garabito, Luis Botello, Fernando Munoz, and 
Andres de Valderrabano. They were to make their 
visit by night and to gather information from the 
servant who would be found in Balboa's house. 

But the crisis foretold by the astrologer and 
registered by the star had come. Garabito under 
a dissembling exterior hated Balboa for having 
admonished him against attempted familiarities 
with Careta's daughter. He had even written 
to Pedrarias that Balboa cared naught for Dona 



88 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Maria, to whom he was betrothed, and meant at 
the earliest opportunity to renounce the Governor 
personally as well as politically. Furthermore, the 
remark of Balboa about a speedy putting to sea 
had been overheard by a sentry, who, mistaking it 
for treason, had so reported it to Garabito or 
Botello. Finally, the period within which the 
Adelantado was to be ready for sea, under agree- 
ment with the Governor, had been much exceeded 
and Pedrarias would not extend it; and when Bal- 
boa's chief financial backer, Fernando de Arguello, 
wrote advising a putting to sea at once, the letter 
was intercepted. 

Garabito and Botello on their nocturnal visit 
to Ada were both apprehended, and what they 
related to Pedrarias deeply implicated Balboa in 
disloyalty and intrigue. How the story roused 
Pedrarias, primitive Spaniard that he was, to a 
cold fury, distinctly appears in the counter meas- 
ures which he took. To Balboa he penned a be- 
guiling letter, inviting him to come to Ada. To 
Francisco Pizarro — the model subordinate, the 
ever-dutiful one — he at the same time gave orders 
to gather a force, meet Balboa, and arrest him. 
The Adelantado came. Warnings he received, 
but he disregarded them. Before he had crossed 



BALBOA AND THE PACIFIC 89 

the sierra he was met by Pizarro's force. The 
leader himself stepped forward and made the 
arrest. "It is not thus," said Balboa, smiling 
sadly, *'that you were wont to come forth to re- 
ceive me, Francisco Pizarro." 

Balboa's trial was conducted by the alcalde 
mayor or chief judge, Gaspar de Espinosa, and 
the Adelantado's entire record, from the days of 
Enciso and Nicuesa, was admitted against him. 
Even so he would have been allowed an appeal to 
the Crown, had it not been for the Governor, who 
would not assent to it. 

At Santa Maria, in the plaza, a scaffold and 
block were prepared, and early in the morning of 
a day in January, 1519, Balboa was led forth in 
chains. Before him walked the town crier ex- 
claiming : "Behold the traitor and usurper !" " 'Tis 
false!" retorted Balboa, "never have I been dis- 
loyal!" With this, he mounted the scaffold and 
received the sacrament. His head was then cut 
off upon a hatchment cloth and stuck upon a 
pole. The same day, until past nightfall, were 
beheaded in ghastly succession Valderrabano, Bo- 
tello, Munoz, and Arguello. Pedrarias, it is said, 
witnessed the executions from behind the shelter 
of a lattice; while as for Garabito, he reaped a 



90 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

not uncommon reward of treachery in the salva- 
tion of his own Hfe. 

Thus the third voyage of Columbus, the voyage 
for pearls, brought about, as a first great result, 
the occupation of that part of the mainland of 
America now known as the Isthmus of Panama 
and the discovery of the Pacific Ocean. As its 
second great result, it brought about, though less 
directly, the occupation of Mexico, a tale which 
remains to be told. 



CHAPTER IV 

CORTES AND MEXICO 

Where dwell the gods? 
Where dwell the gods? 
Oh dwell they in the sky? 

The gods are always nigh. 

Raymond: The Aztec God. 

But what of the young nobleman — Valdivia? "O 
you wretched men of Darien, " exclaims Peter 
Martyr, "tarry for Valdivia whom you sent to 
provide to helpe your necessities? Provide for 
yourselves rather, and trust not to them whose 
fortune yee know not." 

Juan de Valdivia, it will be remembered, had in 
January, 1512, set out from Santa Maria of Darien 
for Espanola to solicit of Don Diego Columbus a 
supply of food. His return, long looked for, never 
came. His ship was wrecked off Jamaica, and he 
was carried in an open boat with a few followers 
to the coast of Yucatan. Here he was seized by 

91 



92 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

the local cacique and with three others was sacri- 
ficed to the gods, his heart being torn out and his 
flesh eaten. Some of the company were kept 
prisoners. One by one they died till two only were 
left — Gonzalo Guerrero, a seaman, and Geronimo 
de Aguilar, a friar — both of whom some eight 
years later were found, as will be seen, by Cortes. 
Columbus never reached Yucatan, but on his 
first voyage he heard of the culture of a people 
called the Mayas, who wore clothes and dwelt on 
a mainland ten days' journey in a canoe from Es- 
panola; and on his fourth voyage he came, on July 
30, 1502, into actual touch with this civilization, 
near the island of Guanaja, off the coast of Hon- 
duras. Here he encountered a monster canoe 
provided with an awning and laden with merchan- 
dise; a canoe bearing a cacique clad in loin cloth 
and mantle; one, furthermore, which was being 
propelled by a band of twenty -five Indians "well 
clothed." Nor was Columbus's acquaintance with 
the Maya culture limited to the sight of the canoe. 
Near Cariari (Nicaragua) he personally visited a 
mountain tomb, *'as large as a house and elabo- 
rately sculptured," where there stood, or crouched, 
as though peering within, the corpse of a Maya 
Indian. He saw also, he tells us, "some large 



CORTES AND MEXICO 93 

sheets of cotton cloth elaborately and cleverly 
worked, and other sheets [Maya manuscripts?] 
very delicately painted." 

As compared with the Nahuas of Mexico (pre- 
Aztec as well as Aztec), the Mayas of Yucatan 
were an ancient, a peaceful, and a polished race; 
and, like all races that have advanced as far 
as barbarism, they were emphatically religious. 
Their most characteristic deity, perhaps, was It- 
zamna, god of the East or rising sun, inventor of 
letters. But there was another sun deity, Ku- 
kulcan, the most active and immanent of the Maya 
gods. He was patron of arts and crafts, inculcator 
of peace, and withal deprecator of human sac- 
rifices — a god of order who, having founded cities, 
had departed into the sunrise, whence he had 
promised to return at a future time. War gods 
there were in the Maya pantheDn, but war and 
religion, despite some human sacrifices, were not 
the intimate blend that they were in Mexico. 

If the death of Valdivia and his three fellow 
unfortunates upon a heathen altar may be re- 
garded as demanding of Heaven to be avenged, 
vengeance nevertheless was somewhat delayed. 
Valdivia died in 1512. Up to that time but little 
had been done to subdue and occupy the Antilles 



94 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS ^ 

outside of Espanola. In 1509 Diego Columbus had 
sent a Governor to Jamaica, and in 1511 he had 
made Diego Velasquez Governor of Cuba — a land 
which Christopher Columbus had never recognized 
as insular, but which had been officially demon- 
strated so to be by a voyage of circumnavigation 
effected by Sebastian de Ocampo in 1508. Velas- 
quez was jocose and affable but at the same time 
acquisitive and envious. To Cuba he took with 
him, or soon summoned to follow him, Francisco 
Hernandez de Cordoba, Juan de Grijalva, Bar- 
tolome de las Casas, Panfilo de Narvaez, and 
Hernan Cortes. Narvaez did the work of pacifica- 
tion, while Velasquez founded Trinidad, Puerto 
del Principe, Matanzas, Santo Espiritu, San Sal- 
vador, Habana, and Santiago. 

In 1516, because of the continued famine in 
Darien, Governor Pedrarias gave leave to his silken 
host, as many as wished, to go to Cuba, where 
provisions were not lacking. And one hundred 
and ten went. Velasquez met them cordially and 
promised them land if they would wait for vacan- 
cies, but they were tired of a passive role and 
craved activity. Slave catching, though contrary 
to law, was at this time practised in the island, 
and it no doubt was with the profits from such an 



CORTES AND MEXICO 95 

enterprise in view that the Darien arrivals made 
ready an expedition which would serve as an out- 
let for their energies. They chartered two ves- 
sels, Velasquez, it is said, contributing a third, 
and on February 8, 1517, with Hernandez do 
Cordoba, now a rich planter of Santo Esplritu, as 
captain, unfurled their sails from San Cristobal, 
the old Habana. 

Whither should they fare? Their chief pilot 
counseled adventuring straight into the west, into 
the region of the people who "wore clothes." The 
squadron, about the 1st or 2d of March, reached 
the island of Las Mugeres (Island of Women), 
and on the 4th landed at Point Catoche, the ex- 
treme northeasterly limit of Yucatan. Their 
next landing was at Champoton, in Campeche, 
whence they tediously worked their way back to 
San Cristobal by way of the peninsula of Florida. 
On this expedition the Spaniards were roughly 
handled by the natives. Both Cordoba and Bernal 
Diaz were wounded, the former so severely that 
soon after reaching Cuba he died. But the in- 
vaders succeeded in bringing away two youths 
whom they named, respectively, Melchor and 
Julian, and to whom they taught Spanish, that 
they might serve as interpreters. 



96 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Foiled as to slave catching but curious regarding 
Yucatan, the Cuban settlers by 1518 were ready 
for a second adventure into the west, and this time 
it was Velasquez who took the lead. He managed 
to add two vessels to two others left from the ex- 
pedition of Cordoba, enlisted some two hundred 
and fifty men, and appointed Juan de Grijalva 
commander-in-chief. Sail was made from San- 
tiago de Cuba on the 8th of April, with Alaminos 
once more as chief pilot, and on the 3d of May the 
fleet gained, to the southward of Point Catoche, a 
large island called Cozumel (Island of Swallows). 
By the last of the month the expedition had passed 
Lake Terminos, and by the 18th of June various 
rivers of Tabasco, such as Rio de Grijalva and 
Rio de Banderas, and various islands off Mexico, 
including San Juan de Ultia and Isla de Sacrificios. 
They made a landing where now stands the city 
of Vera Cruz. 

Grijalva, under the orders given him, might 
trade in any regions discovered, but he might not 
colonize, and, as the country everywhere by its 
aspect invited to colonization, Alvarado on the 
24th of June was permitted to sail for Cuba 
to carry back the sick, report progress, and, if 
possible, obtain permission to form settlements. 



CORTES AND MEXICO 97 

Meanwhile Grijalva followed the Mexican coast 
as far north as Cape Rojo, whence, returning to 
Yucatan, he sailed for Cuba, reaching Matanzas 
about the 1st of November. 

On both the Cordoba and Grijalva expeditions 
the Spaniards were impressed by divers things, but 
more than with anything else by the scenery, the 
sacrificial mounds, and the stone temples. On 
every island, and dotting the coast of the mainland, 
were to be seen mounds pyramidal in form, as- 
cended by stone steps, and surmounted by temple 
towers of squat masonry. The towers gleamed 
white, and over them floated the smoke of incense 
and of sacrifice. At Campeche, Cordoba saw many 
temples or "prayer-places" wetted within with 
fresh blood. From each there swarmed angrily 
forth half a score of priests, armed with braziers, 
and clad in white mantles down which fell their 
hair, long, black, and disheveled — so matted and 
clotted with blood, from their own ears lacerated 
in penance, that one strand could not be separated 
from another. Indeed the farther to the west the 
Spaniards fared — the closer their approach, that 
is to say, to the Nahua tribes of Mexico as dis- 
tinguished from the Maya of Yucatan — the more 
the evidences of human sacrifices multiplied. 



98 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

"Why, " asked Grijalva of a Tabasco Indian, "this 
ripping open of human bodies and offering of 
bloody hearts to hungry gods?" "Because," was 
the reply, " the people of Ulua [by which was meant 
Mexico] will have it so." 

When, in November, 1518, Grijalva reached 
Cuba — then called Isla Fernandina — he found 
himself most undeservedly out of favor. He was 
young, handsome, and chivalric, but above all 
conscientious, so conscientious that Las Casas 
tells us he would have made a good monk. Having 
been ordered not to plant colonies, he had obeyed. 
But obedience proved to be his undoing, for, 
angered by it, his subordinates, particularly Alva- 
rado, whom he had reproved, had misrepresented 
him to Velasquez, and already that grasping ruler 
had decided upon a new voyage in which Grijalva 
was not to share. 

For this new voyage Velasquez sought a com- 
mander of quite supermundane qualities — one 
astute and valiant enough to achieve rare deeds 
and at the same time subservient enough to give 
all the honors and emoluments to Velasquez. 
The Governor, profiting by Grijalva's labors, had 
already on the 13th of November secured for him- 
self the adelantadoship of all that "he had dis- 



CORTES AND MEXICO 99 

covered" in the West or "might thereafter dis- 
cover" there, and his solicitude to make just the 
right choice of a commander was intense. Then, 
as not seldom in human affairs, stepped in Fate — 
ironical, mocking Fate. To Diego Velasquez, 
tremulous with apprehension lest he choose 
v/rongly for himself. Fate dictated the selection 
of Hernan Cortes! 

It has been said that the rise of Cortes was due 
to the third voyage of Columbus; and the state- 
ment is true in that his rise was part of the move- 
ment following upon Columbus's pearl discoveries 
— a movement which, through Nicuesa and Ojeda, 
begat Balboa; and, through Balboa, begat Pe- 
drarias; and, through Pedrarias, those activities in 
Cuba which resulted in the expeditions of Cordoba 
and Grijalva. Apropos of Columbus, in this con- 
nection, regret at times has found voice that it 
was not he who conquered Mexico rather than 
Cortes. There, it is said, he would have found 
fulfillment of his dream of gold, if not of spicery, 
in measure far more complete than in Asia and 
India, for in the fifteenth century the Cathay of 
Marco Polo, as also Polo's Cipangu, were van- 
ished things. But to each his task. The Mexican 



100 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

conquest called for traits at least one of which, 
ruthlessness, Columbus did not possess. It called, 
that is to say, for the traits which were pecul- 
iarly Spanish, and it called for all of them — for 
ruthlessness, for pride, for devoutness, and for 
romanticism. These traits, combined and co- 
ordinated in a unique manner, belonged to Cortes. 

Hernan Cortes was born in Medellin, in Estre- 
madura, in 1485. His parents were — as who in 
those days in Spain was not.^^ — of noble descent 
though poor. As he was delicate in health, he was 
destined for the law. At fourteen he entered the 
University of Salamanca, where he remained two 
years, acquiring a smattering of Latin and some 
ease in rhetoric. On leaving the university he 
looked about him. He might join the banner of 
the Great Captain, Cordoba, as had been the 
frustrated purpose of so many of the followers 
of Pedrarias, or he might go to the Indies. The 
Indies were his choice, and thither in 1504 he took 
passage. 

This was the period just subsequent to the 
coming of Nicolas de Ovando to Espanola as 
Governor, and Cortes after some hesitation was 
induced by Ovando to become a planter. In 1510 
he would have joined Nicuesa on his Veragua 



CORTES AND MEXICO 101 

(Castilla del Oro) expedition, but was prevented 
by an abscess under the right knee. In 1511 Diego 
Velasquez, who admired his intelligence, took him 
to Cuba as business adviser or private secretary. 
Cortes was young and famed for his amorous 
gallantries. According to reports not altogether 
illuminating, his "affairs" in Cuba involved him 
in discord with Velasquez. Catalina Suarez was 
the name of one of his inamoratas, and her he 
married. By 1518 Velasquez, despite differences, 
had appointed him alcalde at Santiago de Cuba. 
Cortes was now thirty-three. He was of medium 
stature, compact and muscular, and had dark eyes, 
good features, a short beard, and legs a trifle 
bowed. Outwardly he was frank and vivacious, 
but inwardly he was calculating and self-contained. 
Since 1516 in Espanola, Diego Columbus, as 
Admiral and Governor, had been under the super- 
visory authority of three monks, known as the 
Jeronimite Fathers, who had been sent to the 
Indies at the instance of Las Casas to temper 
somewhat with mercy the dealings of Spaniards 
with the natives, and it was necessary to obtain 
from them sanction for enterprises such as that 
for which Velasquez had selected Cortes. Velas- 
quez obtained the requisite sanction and, on the 



102 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

23d of October, before Grijalva's own return from 
the west, he issued instructions authorizing (as 
in Grijalva's case) exploration but not colonization. 

Cortes was now energy itself. He mortgaged 
his estate; he secured a large contribution from 
Velasquez; he stuck a plume in his bonnet; he 
hoisted a banner; he issued proclamations. By 
these means and by enacting throughout a jovial 
role, he gathered out of Cuba and Jamaica eleven 
vessels, 508 soldiers, and 109 seamen by February 
10, 1519. But there were difficulties, and the 
gravest of these was a distrust of Cortes which 
was more and more perceptibly defining itself 
in the mind of the Governor. 

Like the chorus in the drama of antiquity, the 
fool or jester of early modern drama performed a 
work of prognosis. He forecast the issue. Such 
a fool Diego Columbus had about him, officially, 
in the person of a sharp-witted dwarf named 
Francisquillo. This oracle, unlike the fool in Lear, 
did not say openly to his master: "Thou had'st 
little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav'st thy 
golden one away, " but he said what was equivalent 
to it. To Velasquez — as one day, along with 
Cortes, he surveyed the harbor of Santiago alive 
with the preparation of Cortes's fleet — Francis- 



CORTES AND MEXICO 103 

quillo, who was capering about, exclaimed: *'Have 
a care, Diego, Diego, lest this Estremaduran 
captain of yours make off with the fleet ! " Herein, 
it is said, the distrust on the part of Velasquez 
took its rise. 

Cortes did not slink from Santiago with his ships 
in the night. He left openly in the daytime after 
embracing the Governor, but he was nevertheless 
closely watched. Indeed Velasquez's distrust of 
him continued to grow, for he made frantic efforts 
to supersede him at Trinidad and to stop him and 
apprehend him at San Cristobal. 

In his train Cortes took a notable band of Span- 
ish gentlemen — ten stanch captains each in com- 
mand of a company, with himself in command 
of the eleventh. The arms carried were thirty- 
two crossbows, thirteen firelocks, and an outfit 
of swords and spears, the whole reenforced by ar- 
tillery in the form of ten bronzed guns — breech- 
loaders! — and four falconets. But above and be- 
yond all else were sixteen noble horses, about which 
more anon. The general rendezvous was Cape 
San Antonio, the most westerly point of Cuba, 
whence on the 18th of February the expedition — 
all save Pedro de Alvarado's ship, which was driven 
aside by tempest — set its prows for Cozumel. 



104 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

At this time there was no knowledge in the 
Indies of the fate of the Valdivia party, but on 
the Cordoba expedition Indians of Campeche had ; 
saluted the Spaniards with the word "Castilan," | 
and this w^as deemed significant. At any rate after 
much inquiry on the Yucatan coast and much dis- 
patching of messengers inland, Aguilar appeared, 
though Guerrero did not. Provided thus with a 
reliable interpreter — for Melchor and Julian had 
proved wanting and Aguilar was willing — Cortes 
early in March set sail with his fleet for the coun- 
try of the cacique Tabasco. 

The halting point of the Spaniards was an island 
in the Tabasco or Grijalva River, but when they 
sought to establish themselves on the mainland, 
christened by Cortes "New Spain," they were 
vigorously withstood. A fight took place on the 
25th of March, and fortune was turned in favor of 
the Spaniards and against overwhelming bodies of 
Indians by the artillery and the horses. 

In Darien, where the natives were lower in the 
scale of barbarism than in Yucatan and Mexico, 
Balboa had already won triumphs by the aid of 
powerful dogs. But to the east of the Gulf of 
Uraba, that region of the poisoned arrow, dogs 
had not been found effective; and in Yucatan 



CORTES AND MEXICO 105 

and Mexico — where the missiles most in use were 
darts, javehns, slingstones, and the obsidian- 
edged sword-club or macuahuitl — dogs, save for 
hunting purposes, were eschewed. What in Darien 
was accomplished by the dog was accomplished in 
the region farther west by the horse. 

At Tabasco, or rather on the plain of Ceutla 
near by, the horses, supported by the cannon, 
therefore won the day. The Indians, who 
"covered the whole plain," who "wore great 
feather crests" and "quilted cotton armor," who 
carried "drums and trumpets" and rained upon 
their foe arrows, javelins, and stones, were finally 
hemmed in between the Spanish guns, which 
ploughed through their masses, and the Spanish 
horse, who under Cortes himself speared them 
down, and so were brought to a stand. In the eyes 
of the terrorized barbarians the guns with their 
thunder and lightning were a marvel; but the 
horsemen were a greater marvel still, for they were 
each a living monster, horse and rider, in the words 
of Bernal Diaz, "being all one animal." 

It was at the close of this battle that the Tabas- 
cans, suing for peace, brought to Cortes twenty 
young women, among them Dona Marina, as she 
came to be known — "a truly great chief teness. 



106 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

a daughter of caciques and a mistress of vassals." 
Marina was Aztec, but as a little girl had been 
given by her mother to the Indians of Tabasco in 
order to make way for the succession of a half- 
brother to the headship of her tribe. Cortes at 
first did not bestow upon her especial notice, 
merely assigning her to "a distinguished gentle- 
man. ' ' What made her fortune was her knowledge 
of both Nahua and Maya speech, combined with 
her intelligence. The rescued Aguilar, who spoke 
the Maya of Yucatan and Tabasco, readily under- 
stood the Maya of Tabasco as spoken by Marina. 
So, as it proved, the chain of tongues indispensable 
to Cortes was complete — Marina translating Az- 
tec Nahua into Tabascan Maya, which Aguilar in 
turn put into Castilian Spanish. 

Cortes, who no less than Columbus was devout, 
spent Palm Sunday of the year 1519 at Tabasco, 
where a religious procession was held and mass 
was sung, and where the Indians were stoutly 
exhorted to give up their bloody sacrifices and 
idols. The fleet then set sail and by Holy Thurs- 
day was at the island of San Juan de Ulua. Here 
the Spaniards first came to a definite knowledge of 
the existence and importance of Montezuma. It 



CORTES AND MEXICO 107 

is true that at Tabasco Grijalva had heard of a 
Culuaj or Ulua, "where there was plenty of gold"; 
but, in the words of the chronicler, "we did not 
know what this Culua could be." 

At San Juan de Ulua the fleet of Cortes lay at 
anchor, its fiery purpose clothed, as some one has 
said, in dissembling white. Hardly had it assumed 
its position when from two large canoes there 
ascended to the deck of the flagship a group of 
Indians. Asking for the Tlatoan, or Chief, they 
did him reverence, but beyond this they were 
unable to make themselves understood. There- 
upon Marina, who with other slave girls was 
standing by, said to Aguilar that the Indians 
were Mexicans sent by the cacique Cuitlalpitoc, 
a servant of Montezuma, and that he wished to 
know whence the strangers had come and why. 
So was begun a series of interchanges between 
Cortes and the overlord of Culua or Mexico — 
interchanges conducted on the part of the one 
with veiled though ever mounting audacity, and 
on the part of the other with veiled though ever 
deepening apprehension. 

For more than a fortnight Cortes encouraged 
the coming of embassies — "for trade." First 
came Cuitlalpitoc accompanied by his superior, 



108 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Teuhtlilli; and with them they brought cotton 
fabrics done in brilliant feather designs — ten 
bales of them — as also articles of wrought gold 
set with rare stones. In return Cortes gave a 
carved and inlaid armchair, some engraved stones, 
a crimson cap, beads, and a gilt helmet which 
Teuhtlilli had wondered at and was told to bring 
back filled with gold dust. The Spaniard asked 
also for a time and place to be fixed at which he 
might meet Montezuma. 

Then, in due season, came a second embassy, 
one headed by a cacique named Quintalbor, who 
in looks resembled Cortes. With Quintalbor came 
Teuhtlilli; and this time, besides cotton fabrics 
embroidered in feathers and gold, there were 
brought large plumes of bright colors spangled 
with gold and pearls; great feather fans; rods of 
gold like a magistrate's staff; collars and necklaces 
with pendant golden bells; head-dresses of green 
quetzal feathers and gold, or of feathers and silver; 
miniature golden fish; alligators, ducks, monkeys, 
pumas, and jaguars; a graceful bow with twelve 
sharp arrows — all these things, to say naught of 
Nahua books executed in picture-writing upon 
cotton or bark. Nor yet were these things all, for, 
dominating the entire collection, were a wheel of 



CORTES AND MEXICO 109 

gold as large as a cart-wheel, a wheel of silver 
equally large (the twain worth in American money 
of today some $290,000), and the helmet at which 
Teuhtlilli had wondered filled with grains of gold 
fresh from the placers. 

The object of this second embassy was clearly to 
bribe Cortes into leaving the country, for, to his 
wish again earnestly expressed to visit Montezuma 
many objections were courteously interposed. The 
refusal indeed was soon made pointed and explicit, 
for Teuhtlilli, having gone through the form of 
carrying to his lord the Spanish leader's reiterated 
request, came back after ten days bearing a 
quantity of robes, feathers, and gems as a gift to 
be carried by Cortes personally to his own over- 
lord, the Spanish King. 

Having thus "felt out" Montezuma and his 
magnificence, Cortes saw his goal before him. 
But could he reach it.? Reach it he must if he 
would escape outlawry. Already he had broken 
with Velasquez, for at Tabasco he had taken 
possession in the name of the King alone. His 
position was like that of Balboa after he had de- 
ported Enciso and had heard of the golden-shored 
Pacific. He must seize his opportunity. He must 
do or die. 



110 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

As a first step Cortes resolved upon a new basis 
for his expedition. The soldiers must become a 
Spanish colony looking immediately to the King. 
Over this colony he himself must be chosen Cap- 
tain-General and Justicia Mayor. As such he 
could found a settlement, taking care by destroy- 
ing his fleet to remove from his followers all tempta- 
tion to resume relations with Cuba and Velasquez. 
Even so, however, the situation for Cortes was 
fraught with difficulty. Assuming the successful 
establishment of direct relations with Charles V, 
successor to Ferdinand on the Spanish throne, how 
about the Indians? What would be their attitude 
toward the appropriation of Montezuma's wealth 
by the arrogant white strangers — the white 
strangers from out the sunrise.? But just here a 
stroke of fortune ! 

Across the sand dunes above the San Juan de 
Uliia anchorage, came one day, soon after the de- 
parture of the last of the embassies from Monte- 
zuma, five Indians. They were not Aztec, but two 
of their number spoke Nahua, and by aid of Marina 
and Aguilar it was quickly learned that they were 
Totonacs, subject to Montezuma and hating him 
with a deadly fear. Their principal settlement, 
Cempoalla, was a short distance inland to the 



CORTES AND MEXICO 111 

north, and here, eager for a conference with the 
white chieftain, waited their cacique. Into the 
hands of Cortes was given a possible solution of his 
difficulty, and he was not slow to perceive it. 

Cortes approached Cempoalla overland with 
four hundred men and two light guns; while the 
fleet ascended the coast some ten leagues to a 
harbor called Bernal, discovered by Francisco de 
Montejo. At the anchorage opposite San Juan de 
Ulua — the present Vera Cruz — it was not only 
hot and damp, but according to Bernal Diaz " there 
were always there many mosquitoes, both long- 
legged ones and small ones." The way to Cem- 
poalla wound through tropical forest filled with 
birds of startling plumage and dominated through- 
out by the snow-crowned peak of Orizaba, "Star 
Mountain," gleaming in majesty to the south and 
west. As for the settlement itself, it was the first 
great town, the product of barbarism, which the 
Spaniards had seen. From out a plaza rose 
towered temples on pyramidal foundations; while 
the sides of the square were formed by terrace- 
roofed buildings of stone and adobe, the whole 
brilliant with white stucco. 

Cempoalla was dazzling, but no less was it 
beautiful. Not only did it shine like silver, of 



112 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

which some of the Spaniards at first thought it to 
be constructed, but its houses were embowered in 
green, and against this green and the white walls 
beneath glowed the massed colors of tropical 
flowers. Roses in particular abounded. As the 
Spaniards entered and marched along, they were 
met by deputations which showered roses upon the 
horsemen. To Cortes some handed bouquets, 
while others flung rose garlands about his neck or 
placed wreaths on his helmet. The foot-soldiers, 
too, were remembered, for to them were given 
pineapples, cherries, juicy zapotes, and aromatic 
anonas. The palace or official abode of the ca- 
cique was at length reached, and, though that per- 
sonage was very sedate, he was so corpulent and 
shook so when he walked that the Spaniards could 
not be restrained from laughing at him. 

Hardly had Cortes arrived in the Cempoallan 
district when proof of the dread which the overlord 
of Ulua or Mexico inspired was dramatically re- 
vealed. Five of Montezuma's tribute men ap- 
peared. Haughty and insolent was their mien, and 
upon them the Cempoallans attended like slaves. 
"Their shining hair," says Bernal Diaz, **was 
gathered up as though tied on their heads, and each 
one was smelling the roses that he carried, and 



CORTES AND MEXICO 113 

each had a crooked staff in his hand." The mean- 
ing of the visit was that Montezuma resented the 
fact that Cempoalla was entertaining the white 
strangers, especially as by the last embassy sent to 
Cortes it had been made plain that their presence 
in Mexico was no longer desired. Expiation, 
therefore, was demanded, and of the Cempoallan 
youth, men and maids, twenty must accompany 
the tribute men to Ulua and yield their hearts upon 
the altar. 

Cortes's purpose in Cempoalla was to cement an 
alliance with the Totonacs, yet to avoid as long as 
possible a break with the lord of Ulua. He secretly 
ordered the Cempoallans to throw Montezuma's 
envoys into prison and to withhold tribute. At 
the same time he ingratiated himself with Mon- 
tezuma by covertly liberating the prisoners and 
sending them to their lord with the tale of their 
deliverance at his hands. Montezuma therefore 
reopened relations with the Spanish leader by 
sending a further embassy bearing presents. 
Upon this delegation Cortes wrought with great 
effect by resorting to his never failing dependence 
— the horse. Verily, to the Mexicans, the neck 
of the horse was "clothed with thunder"; "the 
glory of his nostrils was terrible"; "he swallowed 



114 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

the ground with fierceness and rage, and said 
among the trumpets 'ha! ha!"* 

Having concluded an alliance with the Totonacs, 
Cortes founded in June, 1519, in Bernal Harbor his 
projected settlement, the town of Villa Rica de la 
Vera Cruz; and in July he sent to the King letters 
explanatory of the proceeding. Just prior to this, 
in renewed fury of missionary zeal — a fury which 
Father Olmedo, priest to the army, did his best 
somewhat to restrain — he had thrown down the 
idols at Cempoalla and cleansed the temples of 
blood. His next acts were to scuttle and sink his 
ships; to lash, mutilate, or hang, various Velasquez 
conspirators; and to frighten away an expedition 
sent out by the Governor of Jamaica. There now 
remained, as the one sole objective of the Spaniards 
in Mexico, Montezuma and his gold. 

Montezuma is lord of many kings; his equal is not 
known in all the world; in his house many lords serve 
barefooted with eyes cast down to the ground; he has 
thirty thousand vassals in his empire each of whom has 
one hundred thousand fighting men; each year twenty 
thousand persons are regularly sacrificed in his domin- 
ions — some years fifty thousand. Montezuma dwells 
in the most beautiful, the largest, and the strongest city 
in the world — a city built in the water, possessing a 
noble palace and plaza, one the center of an immense 



CORTES AND MEXICO 115 

traiSc. Hither flock princes from all the earth bringing 
incalculable riches. No lord however great is there who 
does not pay tribute, and no one so poor is there who 
does not give at least the blood of his arm. The cost ot 
all is enormous, for, besides his household, Montezuma 
is constantly waging war and maintaining vast armies. 



These words of the cacique Olintetl echoed in the 
ears of Cortes as, on August 31, 1519, he departed 
from the friendly Totonac country on his way to 
pay that visit to Montezuma which had been so 
persistently declined. Had it been Columbus, 
what more of confirmation would he have required 
that he was about to behold the city and court of 
the Great Kaan.? As it was, even the practical- 
minded Cortes felt himself impelled to write: 
"According to our judgment, it is credible that 
there is everything in this country which existed 
in that from which Solomon is said to have brought 
the gold for the Temple." 

Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Abode of the War God, 
the "Place of the Stone and Prickly Pear," seat of 
the power of Montezuma, whereof the Spaniards 
had heard under the name Ulua, was a wonderful 
place to the Spaniard, but he failed to understand 
its real significance. What the Spaniard found in 



116 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Mexico, as he believed, was merely a *' feudal mon- 
archy" under a "king," supported by a "nobil- 
ity" occupying "palaces" in a picturesque "city" 
full of "mosques." In point of fact Cortes un- 
wittingly was looking across an abyss of perhaps 
ten . thousand years — actually seeing the dead 
past live again. "To say," remarks John Fiske, 
"that it was like stepping back across the centuries 
to visit the Nineveh of Sennacherib or hundred- 
gated Thebes is but inadequately to depict the 
situation, for it was a longer step than that." 
Yes, immeasurably longer, for it was a step from 
civilization quite to mid-barbarism. 

What it really was that Tenochtitlan disclosed 
to the Spaniards may perhaps be best conceived 
by the aid of a survey from the summit of one of 
the so-called mosques. 

The Central Valley of Mexico is a plateau some 
7400 feet above sea-level, about 60 miles long by 
40 broad, and surrounded by mountains. Here 
the waters, collected by drainage as in a basin, 
spread themselves out in three shallow lakes or 
lagoons — of which Chalco and Xochimilico are 
fresh, and Tezcoco is salt — covering in all perhaps 
442 square miles. Near the western side of Lake 
Tezcoco are two marsh islands, and over them 



CORTES AND MEXICO 117 

extends the community of Mexico-Tenoehtitlan 
with its adjunct Tlatelolco. This community, 
which is not at all a "city" or municipality, is of 
about one-fourth the extent of the Mexico City of 
the present day, and harbors at this early time a 
population of perhaps 70,000 souls. Connection 
with the mainland is maintained by three long 
causeways — one to the north, one to the west, 
and one to the south — each 20 or 25 feet broad, 
and of a cement construction which is hard and 
smooth. These causeways, provided as they are 
with sluice gates, serve also as dikes for regulating 
the flow and depth of the water to the west of 
the islands, where it discharges from Chalco and 
Xochimilico, which are at a higher elevation than 
Tezcoco. For similar control to the eastward of 
the islands, a long dike exists. Besides the three 
main causeways there are certain tributary ones 
and a double aqueduct of concrete bringing water 
from the mainland hill of Chapultepec. 

Turning now our gaze more directly beneath, we 
perceive first that the center of the main com- 
munity, Tenochtitlan, is marked by a great square 
900 by 1050 feet, facing the cardinal points and 
surrounded by a stone wall eight or nine feet high, 
embellished with carved stone serpents. In this 



118 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS ' 

wall, on each side of the square, there is a gate, and 
each gate is approached from without by a broad 
avenue, those leading to the north, south, and west 
gates being prolongations of the causeways. By 
the square and avenues the main community is 
divided into four quarters, the adjunct Tlatelolco 
constituting a fifth division; and each quarter is 
intersected by canals spanned by bridges. The 
great square in Tenochtitlan forms the place of 
trade and concourse, and in Tlatelolco a like square 
subserves the same end. 

So far as buildings are concerned, they are of 
four principal sorts : first, huge communal dwellings; 
next, official edifices or tecpans; then armories or 
"houses of darts," as they are called; and, last- 
ly, temple structures comprehending educational 
houses and quarters for priests. The material of 
all is a reddish stone, for the most part whitened 
to brilliance by stucco; and the foundations as a 
rule are pyramidal in shape. The great square is 
filled with temples — twenty, at least, without 
counting the chief temple; and Tlatelolco also 
has its temples, a chief and lesser ones. 

If the hour of observation from our mosque be 
sunset, the picture will be charming. In the "pale 
blue water sheet of Tezcoco" will be reflected not 



CORTES x^ND MEXICO 119 

alone the white buildings of Mexico-Tenochtitlan 
but those of other similar communities on the 
shores, the whole relieved against a dark blue 
sierra crowned by the peaks, gigantic and roseate, 
of Yztaccihuatl, "White Woman," and Popo- 
catepetl, *' Smoking Mountain." On the other 
hand, if we look at night, charm will be replaced 
by an aspect weirdly sinister. Spectral barks or 
canoes — fifty thousand of them, it is said — will 
be darting athwart the lake and through the 
brazier-lighted canals; while aloft the darkness will 
every where be pierced by temple flames. A modern 
smelting works, somewhat softened, might suggest 
the effect. 

Open daylight, however, will best reveal Mexico- 
Tenochtitlan to the high-placed observer. By it 
the communal dwellings will be seen to be of wide 
extent, but of only one or at most two stories — 
in the latter case receding or terraced — and 
provided with low parapets. The principal tec- 
pans, of which there are two — one being in 
Tlatelolco — are surmounted by observation 
towers, and the pyramids of the temples are 
bulky structures of smooth stone, dented on one 
or more sides by steps and culminating in wooden 
oratories. 



120 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Terrible, indeed, is the religion of the Aztec 
Nahua ! Its leading deity is Huitzilopochtli, god of 
war, and to him chiefly is consecrated the greatest 
pyramid of all. It stands in the broad square of 
Tenochtitlan; it is three hundred feet wide on each 
side at the base, and with its oratories it rises to a 
height of one hundred and fifty feet. Here, under 
one's very nostrils, as one gazes, reeks the blood of 
human sacrifices — blood-offerings performed by 
filthy priests, who, in the curt phrase of Bernal 
Diaz, "stink like sulphur and have another bad 
smell like carrion." 

A second great deity shares with the war god 
his ensanguined abode — Tezcatlipoca, god-of-the- 
breath-of-life, the racial god of the Nahua. Near 
by are the temples of two other important gods: 
Tlaloc, god of rain and fertility; and QuetzalcoatI, 
counterpart of the Maya Kukulcan, god of order, 
enlightenment, and humaneness, the blond and 
bearded god, the "Fair God" of romance. 

But it is not merely the exteriors of houses that 
daylight in Tenochtitlan best reveals. Interiors 
respond to it even more. Here will be seen courts 
supplied with ponds and fountains, the abode in 
some instances of wild beasts and birds; chambers, 
with floors and walls brought to a hard finish by 



CORTES AND MEXICO 121 

cement and gypsum, and decked with feather work 
hangings, mats, and cushions, and provided with 
low-canopied beds, low tables and stools, flint and 
copper implements, and a varied pottery. Be- 
tween many of the buildings, too, are green garden 
plots; and in the lake floating vegetable gardens; 
and in the squares, both of Tenochtitlan and Tlate- 
lolco, huge markets in full tide of activity. 

Of much interest is all this, but obviously in- 
terest of a limited sort. What of the inner self of 
the Aztec? What of his soul.? As disclosed by his 
religion, the soul of the Aztec is dark: war feeds 
it and blood anoints it. But art is a second me- 
dium of soul disclosure, and through it the soul of 
the Aztec is revealed as not inhospitable to light 
and beauty. Of Aztec art, featherwork is the most 
striking example; but metal work, flower culture, 
and poetry are also striking examples — especially 
flower culture and poetry. Cempoalla is a place of 
roses. Mexico-Tenochtitlan is even more such a 
place. Roses peep above the parapets of the com- 
munal dwellings and tecpans, bloom in the chinam- 
pas or floating gardens, depend in garlands from 
the breasts of idols. No occasion is there that 
roses do not grace, be it festival, baptism, wedding, 
or funeral; and though the form of arrangement be 



122 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

oft that of the pyramid or the sacrificial mound, 
beauty veils the tragedy of the suggestion. 

When, therefore, the Aztec poet dreams and 
sings, it is flowers — roses for the most part — 
and other things of a flower-like fragility that he 
celebrates: humming-birds, butterflies, song-birds, 
and precious stones. **I wonder where I may 
gather some pretty sweet flowers. Whom shall I 
ask.f^ Suppose that I ask the brilliant humming- 
bird . . . suppose that I ask the yellow butterfly. 
They will tell me." "I polished my noble new 
song like a shining emerald. I arranged it like 
the voice of the Tzinitzcan bird. ... I set it in 
order like the chant of the Zacuan bird. I mingled 
it with the beauty of the emerald, that I might 
make it appear like a rose bursting its bud." 
*'They led me within a valley to a fertile spot, a 
flowery spot where the dew spread out in glittering 
splendor, where I saw lovely fragrant flowers, 
lovely odorous flowers, clothed with the dew." 
But even amid songs of rejoicing rarely is there 
wanting the minor chord, the plaintive strain com- 
mon to primitive man. "Weeping, I the singer, 
weave my songs of flowers of sadness." "I lift my 
voice in wailing, I am afflicted as I remember that 
we must leave the beautiful flowers, the noble 



CORTES AND MEXICO 123 

songs." "Only sad flowers and songs are here in 
Mexico, in Tlatelolco, Ohuaya! Ohuaya!" 

The Spaniard beholding Mexico-Tenochtitlan, 
with its adjunct Tlatelolco, failed to comprehend 
it, and his failure, save lately and in the case of a 
few persons, has been our own. The Mexico City 
or municipality of the Spaniard was, in fact, an 
Indian pueblo. It had been founded in 1325 by 
southward roving Indians, the Aztecs, a tribe few 
in number and near starvation. Finding the rich 
Mexican valley already occupied, the Aztecs took 
as their portion the two neighboring islands in Lake 
Tezcoco, and devoted themselves to their principal 
need, the production of food, chiefly maize and 
cacao. The tribe in process of time became fierce, 
bloody, and prosperous; and it was the struggle for 
food that made them so. 

This struggle for subsistence, indeed, is the key 
to Aztec life and institutions. To this struggle 
was it due that the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan 
planted gardens and invented the floating garden. 
To this was it due primarily that, feeling the need 
of controlling communication with the mainland, 
they built causeways which might be utilized as 
dikes. To this was it due that, feeling the need of a 
water supply and of an increased amount of food, 



124 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

they mustered courage and conquered portions of 
the mainland nearest to them. To this was it due 
that, growing in population and power and needing 
yet more food, they forced into existence a tripar- 
tite confederacy to levy contribution over an 
ever-widening area. To this was it due that, dis- 
covering the value of terror as a means of rule, 
they developed the ancient Maya-Nahua cult of 
human sacrifice — at first practised infrequently — 
into proportions at once colossal and revolting, and 
made Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, their local 
deity in chief. 

The Aztec tribe as an organism in embryo had 
but one head — a sachem or cacique, a civil leader. 
In him, seemingly, were combined dual elements — 
the Above or Masculine element, and the Below or 
Feminine. With expansion and conflict came a 
need of differentiation of attributes, and there 
arose the war leader or Chief -of -Men. The dis- 
tinctively Masculine element was now embodied 
in him; the Feminine being reserved to his asso- 
ciate, who henceforth bore the title — to many so 
puzzling — of "Snake Woman." In the days of 
the Spanish Conquest the Snake Woman, though 
often alluded to, makes no particular figure. The 
three overshadowing figures are Chief s-of -Men — 



CORTES AND MEXICO U5 

Montezuma, Cuitlahuatzin, and Quauhtemotzin. 
Of these Montezuma is reflective and weak; the 
other two, his successors, decisive and strong. 

Just here, however, our account of Mexico- 
Tenochtitlan must cease, for at the South Cause- 
way, bowing, stands Cortes. He has come with 
some four hundred men, fifteen horses, and seven 
Hght guns. The route by which he traveled from 
the 31st of August to the 15th of October has been 
from Xocotlan southwest to Tlascala, a community 
independent of Montezuma yet distrustful of the 
Spaniard; and from Tlascala southwest to Cholula. 
From Cholula, in the valley or plain of Huitzilipan, 
the invaders have marched west to the moun- 
tain ridge connecting Popocatepetl with its mate, 
Yztaccihuatl, and from here, early in November, 
have surveyed the basin-like valley of Mexico, 
with Mexico-Tenochtitlan afar off amid the waters 
of Lake Tezcoco. They have then approached the 
border of Lake Chalco, traversed a causeway lead- 
ing to a peninsula, Itztapalapan, and now, in the 
community of Itztapalapan itself, stand dazed 
before the ** stone work," the "woodwork of cedar 
and other sweet scented trees," the "orchard and 
garden full of roses and fruit trees, " and the "pond 



126 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

of fresh water with birds of many kinds and 
breeds." To Bernal Diaz and his followers, 
touched with the spirit of Spanish romanticism, 
the scene appears as the "enchantments of the 
legend of Amadis." 

In the mind of Montezuma, meanwhile, the 
grave question has been: Can these Spaniards, 
these strangers of the sunrise, be gods? 

When Grijalva's expedition appeared off the 
coast in 1518, it had been reported to Tenochtitlan 
that in the "waters of heaven," as the open sea 
was called, "floating towers" had appeared, from 
which had descended beings with white faces and 
hands, with beards and long hair, and wearing 
raiment of brilliant colors and "round head- 
coverings." Could these beings be priests or 
heralds of the Fair God Quetzalcoatl, come, accord- 
ing to the Maya-Nahua tradition, to resume sway 
over his people.^ Before proof could be adduced, 
Grijalva had departed; and then, shortly, had 
come swift messengers with news of Cortes and 
with pictures of his "floating towers" and of his 
fair-visaged yet bearded attendants, handling the 
thunder and bestriding fierce creatures that 
spurned the ground. 

Proof regarding the quality of the fair strangers 



CORTES AND MEXICO 127 

was required now more than ever, and so the first 
embassy had been sent to Cortes — the embassy 
that had carried back, as a specimen of the round 
head-coverings of the strangers, the gilt helmet. 
This contrivance, as it chanced, resembled the 
head-coverings of the Aztec gods, and especially 
of Huitzilopochtli, god of war. So there had been 
sent to Cortes the second embassy, bringing the 
head-dresses of quetzal feathers. Now these head- 
dresses were those of the four principal gods of 
the Aztecs: Tezcatlipoca, god-of-the-breath-of-life; 
Huitzilopochtli, god of war; Tlaloc, god of fer- 
tility; and Quetzalcoatl, the fair or culture god. 
What they seemingly were meant to signify to 
Cortes was that Montezuma, tentatively at any 
rate, was willing to acknowledge the former as, 
like himself, entitled to wear them as a representa- 
tive of the gods. 

Nor was this all that the wonderful gifts of the 
second embassy were meant to signify. Among the 
gifts, as will be remembered, were two great wheels 
— one of gold, and one of silver. All Indians of 
America possess a social system more or less fully 
worked out from the heavenly spaces — the Four 
Quarters or cardinal points of direction, and the 
three regions — Above, Below, and Center. The 



128 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

four head-dresses, symbolizing the four principal 
gods, may therefore be conceived as meant to 
stand to Cortes for the Four Quarters; and the gold 
and silver wheels, respectively, for the Above and 
the Below. Something of this kind almost cer- 
tainly was symbolized by the gifts which, besides 
being in the nature of a bribe to the Spaniard, as a 
human being, to depart, were likewise in the nature 
of a propitiatory offering to him, as a god or at 
least a high priest, to be merciful. 

Whether or not the Spaniards really possessed 
preternatural attributes, it had vastly puzzled all 
Mexico to decide. The Cempoallans had indus- 
triously spread the idea that they did; and one 
thing only had served to detract from the claim. 
At Tlascala, where the matter had been put to a 
test, some of the Spanish horses, those creatures 
of terror, had been killed, hacked apart, and trium- 
phantly devoured at feasts. At Cholula, however, 
Cortes by the cleverness of Marina had with un- 
erring precision alighted upon an Aztec plot to 
destroy him — had, as the marveling Cholulans ex- 
pressed it, "read their very minds and thoughts"; 
and such power could pertain to gods alone. 

But to come back to the Spanish leader as he 
stands, bowing, at the South Causeway outside of 



CORTES AND MEXICO 129 

Itztapalapan. Whether he be divine or human, it 
has become apparent that his entry into Tenoch- 
titlan can no longer be prevented by gifts nor 
thwarted by guile. Montezuma, therefore, making 
a virtue of necessity, is about to come forth to 
greet him. Not that machinations have ceased 
at all. Once the Spaniards are beyond the draw- 
bridges with retreat cut off, once securely lodged 
in one of the principal tecpans, it is the purpose of 
the Chief -of -Men, counseled thereto by the dire 
Huitzilopochtli himself, to destroy the invaders 
utterly and to send them in batches to the great 
pyramid as a savory and acceptable blood-offering. 
The point where the ceremonies incident to the 
meeting of Montezuma with Cortes are to take 
place is on the South Causeway at Acachinanco, 
a causeway junction, and here a great crowd is 
gathered. It would seem that not alone is Tenoch- 
titlan a settlement of four divisions, but that Aztec 
territory as such, outside of Tenochtitlan, partakes 
of the same plan; for at the causeway junction 
Cortes is received by four Aztec subchiefs from 
Tezcoco, Itztapalapan, Tacuba, and Coyohua- 
can, settlements on the lake shore to the north- 
east, southeast, northwest, and southwest, respec- 
tively, of Tenochtitlan. The lake is crowded with 



130 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

observers in canoes, but the causeway itself, the 
present Calzada de Iztapalapan, is kept clear, and 
down the vista which it forms rises Mexico, full of 
mystery. || 

The four subchiefs conduct the Spaniards to 
the point where the South Causeway merges in the 
South Avenue, the present street El Rastro, lead- 
ing to the great square, and here Montezuma 
appears in person. He comes reclining in a sump- | 
tuous litter borne upon the shoulders of attendants. 
At sight of Cortes he descends, and there is spread 
above him a baldaquin of light greenish-blue 
feathers with fringe of gold, pearls, and jade. He 
is a man about fifty-two years old, tall, slender, 
and of dignified mien, and his hair is worn short 
over the ears. His garb is a robe of radiant blue 
and gold, and his feet are shod with golden sandals. 
Is it as priest of Huitzilopochtli that he thus 
presents himself to Cortes, the possible representa- 
tive of that other deity, the Fair God Quetzal- 
coatl, waiting to dispossess him.^* Be that as it 
may, the four subchiefs, habited likewise in 
heavenly blue, advance to his support. Digni- 
taries bearing tripartite wands, symbolizing the 
authority of the Confederacy, go before him, while 
attendants sweep clean the highway, and even 



CORTES AND MEXICO 131 

lay carpets that the golden sandals may not touch 
the ground. 

As Montezuma draws near, Cortes dismounts 
from his horse and steps forward. Montezuma 
kisses the earth — an act performed by pressing 
it with the hand and then carrying the hand to the 
lips — and offers to Cortes — how much of Mexico 
is here! — a bunch of roses. The Spanish leader 
moves to salute Montezuma by an embrace, but is 
restrained by a gesture and instead places about 
his neck a necklace of beads taken from his own 
person. Throughout the ceremony the sides of the 
avenue are lined with attending sages, all of whom 
are barefoot, and to none of whom is it permitted 
to raise the eyes to Montezuma — the man of 
great medicine, the high priest. 

When the Spaniards entered Mexico it was 
November 8, 1519. Between this date and the 
beginning of 1520, Cortes and his men found 
lodgings in the halls and chambers of the tecpaUy 
the official house or council lodge in the great 
square, near the great temple, formerly the quar- 
ters of Montezuma himself, but now vacated to 
accommodate the Spaniards; Montezuma having 
taken up new quarters in one of the vast communal 
dwellings. Here Cortes made himself secure by 



132 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

placing cannon to command the approaches, and 
here he was received in audience by Montezuma, 
who, causing him to be seated on **a very rich 
platform," in a chamber "facing a court" em- 
bellished with fountains and flowers, addressed 
him thus: "We believe that our race was brought 
to these parts by a lord, whose vassals they all were, 
and who returned to his native country. . . . 
And we have always believed that his descendants 
would come to subjugate this country and us, as 
his vassals; and according to the direction from 
which you say you come, which is where the sun 
rises, and from what you tell us of your great lord, 
or king, who has sent you here, we believe and 
hold for certain that he is our rightful sovereign." 

Early fruits of the occupation of the tecpan by 
Cortes were the discovery by accident of the walled- 
up storeroom containing the official treasure of the 
Aztec Government — that Aladdin's cave whence 
had come the gold and silver wheels; the burning 
alive of certain Aztec plotters; and the seizure of 
the person of the Chief-of-Men, who, transferred 
to the tecpan, became, under Castilian tutelage, 
the tool and mouthpiece of his captor. 

During 1520 complications for the invaders 
arose. Cortes contrived the seizure of the war 



CORTES AND MEXICO 133 

chiefs of Tezcoco and Tlacopan, sub-heads of the 7/ 
Aztec tripartite confederacy, and of the war chiefs 
of Coyohuacan and Itztapalapan, two of the four 
sub-heads of the Aztec district itself. Then, fur- 
ther, he forbade human sacrifices. By both these 
acts he stored up trouble for himself. Trouble, 
furthermore, developed independently from with- 
out. Diego Velasquez, Governor of Cuba and 
Adelantado of the lands over which Cortes was 
exercising sway, had at length organized a strong 
expedition under Panfilo de Narvaez, a man of 
"hollow" voice, to assert his authority. Narvaez 
reached San Juan de Ulua in April, and secretly 
got into relations with Montezuma. In order to 
check him, Cortes was compelled to divide his own 
small command. Leaving one hundred and forty 
men under Pedro de Alvarado in Tenochtitlan, he 
marched forth with ninety-two men in May, and 
before the end of the month had, near Cempoalla, 
met his foe, defeated him, and made him prisoner. 
Meanwhile in Tenochtitlan, Alvarado, impetuous 
by nature and roused by tales of conspiracy among 
the Aztecs fostered by the coming of Narvaez, set 
upon the population while engaged in celebrating 
the festival of the god Tezcatlipoca and slaughtered 
them without discrimination and without ruth. 



134 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Stunned by the onslaught but rallying promptly, 
the Mexicans fiercely assaulted the tecpan where 
the Spaniards were housed, and held them in a 
state of siege till Cortes, informed of their plight 
by secret messengers, was able to return to their 
relief. Food was running short, and Montezuma, 
being appealed to, induced Cortes to liberate the 
war chief of Itztapalapan, Cuitlahuatzin by name, 
that he might calm the people and procure it. 
This was the beginning of the end of the official 
character of Montezuma. Cuitlahuatzin was hence- 
forth recognized by the clans as Chief -of -Men, and 
led the Mexicans in desperate attempts to force the 
Spaniards out of Tenochtitlan. 

It was now late June and departure from the 
lake settlement became imperative for Cortes. In 
vain did the Spaniards in a hand-to-hand strug- 
gle drive the Aztecs from the dizzy summit of the 
pyramid in the great square. In vain did Mon- 
tezuma appeal to his countrymen from the roof 
of the tecpan. The Chief -of -Men, no longer such, 
was reviled to his face; nay more, was assailed 
by missiles and stricken in the forehead. Within 
three days he was dead, and on the fourth at mid- 
night his erstwhile jailers stole silently from the 
tecpan into the avenue leading west to the Tacuba 



CORTES AND MEXICO 135 

Causeway — shortest of the three routes to the 
mainland and interrupted by the fewest sluice- 
ways. At first undetected, they had nearly gained 
the cause way -head, when the night silence re- 
echoed to a cry — the shriek of a native woman. 
A signal drum on the pyramid in Tlatelolco at 
once boomed forth a warning, and secrecy was at 
an end. It was the noche triste — the "doleful 
night." The bridges over the sluiceways were gone 
and could not be quickly replaced. Men, horses, 
and booty, smitten in rear and flank, filled the 
chasms in a tangled mass. Cortes himself got 
over by the greatest difficulty. Alvarado, it is said, 
cleared one of the chasms by an unparalleled vault- 
ing leap. Velasquez de Leon and Francisco de 
Morla fell, to emerge no more. Of the total force 
of Spaniards — 1250 men since the capture of Nar- 
vaez — some 450 were missing. 

Twenty-four horses survived the catastrophe, 
but the significance of this fact was now small. 
Neither white stranger nor horse was any longer 
preternatural. Both were proven mortal; both 
could perish. Cortes, after all, was not the Fair 
God Quetzalcoatl — was not even his priest. He 
was not divine in any sense — just human, just 
lustful — a dissembling conqueror of flesh and 



136 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

blood. Once on the mainland, the Spaniards 
were able to stay somewhat the Aztec pursuit; 
and though, as Cortes expressed it, "without a 
horse that could run, or a horseman who could 
lift an arm, or a foot soldier who could move," 
he finally managed to round Lake Tezcoco on 
the north, and so, after a fierce melie at Otumba 
on the 7th of July, to reach friendly and shelter- 
ing Tlascala. Among the saved, besides Alvarado, 
were Gonzalo de Sandoval, Cristobal de Olid, and 
the indispensable Marina and Aguilar. 

The capture of Tenochtitlan and the reduction 
of the Aztecs to submission were still as much as 
ever the objects of Cortes, and he resumed the 
task sturdily in spite of his temporary check. His 
forces he rested and augmented. Surrounding 
peoples he coerced or conciliated. The road to 
Vera Cruz he put under guard. Disaffection in 
his own ranks, due to the presence of so many 
of Narvaez's men, he quieted by "soothing elo- 
quence." At length, on the 28th of December, 
all was ready. Tezcoco was occupied, and thirteen 
vessels — shallow barges which, after the manner 
of Balboa in Darien, had been constructed in the 
forest — were carried in pieces across the moun- 
tains and launched on Tezcoco Lake. Between 



CORTES AND MEXICO 137 

March and May, 1521, the Spaniards seized Itzta- 
palapan and other points; and, during May and 
June, Cortes, with nine hundred Spaniards and 
thousands of native alHes, eighty-six horses, and 
eighteen guns, began a systematic siege of Tenoch- 
titlan by land and water. Many were the ad- 
vances and repulses. The Aztecs resisted not alone 
with determination but with the utmost fury. 
They cut the great dike; they converted every 
canal into a moat; they made of every house a 
castle. Taunts and challenges no less than missiles 
they flung across the water and down the converg- 
ing avenues. By night captive Spaniards, goaded 
to the top of the Tlatelolco Pyramid, were spec- 
tacularly slaughtered in the glow of sacrificial fires. 

Spanish valor did much toward the reduction of 
the great community of the lake, but famine and 
wholesale demolition of buildings did more, and 
on the 13th of August the Chief-of-Men, Quauhte- 
motzin, doughty successor to Cuitlahuatzin — who 
had died of smallpox before the siege — surren- 
dered in despair his own person and what remained 
of his nation. 

So fell Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Fortunate was it 
for Cortes that in 1519 it was Montezuma who held 
in Mexico the position of Chief-of-Men! Had it 



138 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS \ 

been otherwise — had this position been held by 
Cuitlahuatzin or Quauhtemotzin — it may be 
doubted whether the Sun myth of the Fair God 
and his impending return would have been per- 
mitted to paralyze action. In a sense far from 
fanciful, Montezuma, "sicklied o'er with the pale 
cast of thought, " was the Hamlet of the Aztecs. 



CHAPTER V 

SPANISH CONQUERORS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 

Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! 
Bright and yellow, hard and cold. 

Hood : Miss Kilmansegg. 

Balboa had fallen before Pedrarias, hut the search 
for some passageway to the provinces and islands 
of the South Sea, rich in spices, pearls, and gold, 
was continued by not unworthy successors in the 
persons of Andres Nino — a sea-dog not to be 
confounded with Pero Alonso Nino, pilot under 
Columbus and Ojeda — and Gil Gonzalez Davila^ 
Columbus himself had sought this passageway 
or strait, between 1502 and 1504, and others had 
followed him. This Nino, too, had explored the 
coast of Darien in behalf of Balboa. In 1519, the 
year of Balboa's death, Nino entered into a part- 
nership with Gil Gonzalez, treasury agent for Es- 
panola, a man of great practicality and excellent 
judgment. The partners were empowered by the 
Crown to take over the ships built by Balboa and 

139 



140 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

to make exploration one thousand leagues to 
the west. Pedrarias — seventy years old, drier, 
harder, more inflexible than ever — refused to de- 
liver the vessels. Gonzalez, whose rank in the 
partnership was that of Captain-General, there- 
upon dismantled his own ships, and, repeating 
the feat of Balboa, carried the materials over the 
mountains to the river Balsas. In the end, after 
delays and discouragements comparable to those 
of Balboa, he managed to build and equip four 
small vessels and with them to sail westward on 
January 21, 1522. 

This expedition, which took a double form — a 
coasting voyage by Nino and a march overland 
by Gonzalez — came first to the lands of the ca- 
cique Nicoya, from whom Gonzalez learned that 
fifty leagues to the northward there dwelt a greater 
cacique whose name was Nicaragua. Gonzalez 
abhorred strife as much as Pedrarias delighted in it, 
and the naive wisdom of Nicaragua had therefore 
a chance to unfold itself unhindered. Whence, 
asked the cacique, after listening to a detailed 
account of the Mosaic scheme of creation, did 
the sun and moon obtain their light and how 
would they lose it.^ Why did not the God of the 
Christians make a better physical world, one more 



SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 141 

comfortable to dwell in? And finally, speaking in 
the ear of the interpreter, he asked: "Came these 
men from the sky?" Being assured that they did, 
his next query was: "But how? Came they di- 
rectly down like a spent arrow, or riding a cloud, 
or in a circuit like a bent bow?" 

The Indian community over which Nicaragua 
ruled was situated on a large freshwater sea, the 
present Lake Nicaragua, and, striding into it, 
Gonzalez drank of the water and took possession 
in the name of the King of Spain. "It is by situa- 
tion," he wrote, "barely three leagues from the 
South Sea, and, according to the pilots, connected 
with the North Sea. If so, it is a great discovery." 
Here Gonzalez repelled an Indian attack under a 
picturesque cacique named Diriangen, and, having 
satisfied himself that as yet the Spaniards of 
Mexico, Cortes and his followers, had made no 
southerly advance, returned to Panama. As for 
Andres Nino, he had coasted as far northwest- 
ward as the Bay of Fonseca on the shores of the 
later Central American provinces of Salvador 
and Honduras. 

But what meanwhile of the doings of Pedrarias? 
It was in January, 1519, that Balboa had been got 



142 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

rid of, and by the 15th of August Pedrarias and 
Espinosa — Gaspar de Espinosa, now Captain- 
General of the South Sea — had crossed the Isth- 
\j mus from Ada and had founded Panama to serve 
as a southern terminal for the long contemplated 
chain of posts to connect the Atlantic with the 
Pacific side of the Isthmus until the ardently 
desired interoceanic strait should be discovered. 
Later the same year a northern terminal was pro- 
vided through the founding of Nombre de Dios. 

With the rise of Panama, now created by royal 
decree a city and the capital of Darien, Santa 
Maria la Antigua, forever ill-famed as the place of 
execution of Balboa, sank rapidly to decay and 
in September, 1524, was burned by the Indians. 
Henceforth, in the old Tierra Firme, Panama 
and Nombre de Dios are the names wherewith 
to conjure. About these cities, more than about 
any others of the Indies, does romance cling. A 
wide road, says Peter Martyr, was built from one 
to the other "through mountains overgrown with 
thick woods never touched from all eternity," to 
the intent that "two carts side by side might pass 
over with ease to search ye secrets of either spa- 
cious Sea." And "ye secrets" were "searched" 
well, for at Panama, by the middle of the century, 



SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 143 

not only did there ride at anchor "ships from the 
South and far western East, laden with the wealth 
of half a world," but "in the sun-beaten streets 
gold and silver lay stacked in bricks," waiting, 
"along with spices and precious merchandise," 
transportation to Nombre de Dios. 

Pedrarias had made headway also both to the 
west and east of his new capital. To the west, as 
far as the nation of the Chiriqui, famed as potters, 
he had sent Espinosa and Francisco Pizarro, the 
latter dutiful as ever. To the south he had like- 
wise sent a faithful retainer and honest man, Pas- 
cual de Andagoya, who, following the Isthmus of 
Darien to where it broadens into the continent 
of South America (Mundus Novus), became the 
explorer of Biru, whence very possibly the name 
Piru, and ultimately that of Peru. At any rate, 
out of the Andagoya expedition grew, as we shall 
see, the subsequent and ever memorable enterprise 
of Pizarro. 

Pedrarias's next step was to send Hernandez de 
Cordoba to forestall Gonzalez in the occupation 
of Nicaragua, a country claimed by him as within 
the confines of Darien. 

Gonzalez appeared at Panama just when Pe- 
drarias was prepared to appropriate his conquests. 



144 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

and so Balboa-like had fairly thrust his head be- ' 
tween the jaws of the lion; but he was quick enough 
to withdraw it, for he spread sail from Nombre de 
Dios as Pedrarias rode up in hot haste to intercept 
him. When Gonzalez returned, he approached 
Nicaragua from the Honduras coast. He thus 
avoided Pedrarias himself but encountered instead 
Hernando de Soto, lieutenant to Cordoba. Gon- 
zalez defeated Cordoba, but only to succumb to 
the superior force of Francisco de las Casas, one 
of Cortes's lieutenants, who carried him to Mexico 
as a prisoner. 

Cordoba meantime, thinking the occasion oppor- 
tune, sought to set up an independent government 
in Nicaragua and Honduras. This act of treachery 
to Pedrarias was reported to him at Panama by 
De Soto, and in January, 1526, Pedrarias set sail 
for Nicaragua in person. With characteristic 
energy and ruthlessness, he arrested Cordoba, put 
him to death, and took control of the province. 
The death of Cordoba may be regarded as marking 
the end of the long-standing duel between Pedra- 
rias and the successors of Balboa, and its conclu- 
sion was not unfavorable to the " swarthv-souled " 
Governor. 

Upon Pedrarias — cunning, indomitable, vin- 



SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 145 

dictive — Fortune seemed ever to smile. When, 
for example, in May, 1520, Lope de Sosa came to 
Antigua to supersede him in office, that unhappy 
man was mortally stricken in the cabin of his ship 
as he prepared to disembark for his inauguration. 
Again, when in 1526 the Governor was recalled 
posthaste to Panama for trial, just as he was on 
the point of seizing from Cortes himself Hondu- 
ras as part of Nicaragua, what should befall but, 
though superseded as to Darien by Pedro de los 
Rios, his authority over Nicaragua was confirmed! 
But the fact is not to be overlooked that he 
was ably and zealously seconded at Court by 
his wife, Isabel de Bobadilla, whom he had season- 
ably dispatched to Spain with his pearls and gold. 
The last years of his life, despite the fact that 
they were the years of an octogenarian, were active 
and marked by bloodshed. On the caciques of 
the country who rose in revolt, he wreaked dia- 
bolical vengeance by his bloodhounds. But he 
had withal an eye for trade and transportation. 
He projected a transcontinental route between 
Lake Nicaragua and the present Greytown, and 
afterwards one between Leon and the north coast 
by way of Salvador. He became interested in the 
expedition of Pizarro to Peru, but in this matter 



10 



146 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS \\ 

he for once suffered bafflement, and died at Leon, ' 
in 1530, as he was nearing his ninetieth year. 

If the adventure of Gil Gonzalez to Lake Nic- 
aragua, in 1522-23, was prompted by fear of 
southward encroachment by Cortes, Cortes him- 
self was not blind to the chance of northward i 
encroachment by the Spaniards of the Isthmus. ' 
In other words, the conqueror of Mexico and 
founder of New Spain sought success also to 
the south, and for two reasons. There lay the 
districts of Guatemala and Honduras — districts 
which, it was said, must "far exceed Mexico in 
riches, while equaling her in the size of towns, in 
the number of inhabitants, and in culture." And 
there, in Castilian fancy, figured that long-sought 
interoceanic strait upon which every one counted 
to reach the vast Pacific with its isles of mystery 
and gold. 

If the Spaniards had but known it, Guatemala 
held things more wonderful than gold or spices or 
even "soft sensuous pearls," for it had been the 
seat and center of early Maya culture centuries 
before, and within its limits, or just beyond, lay 
the amazing ruins of Tikal, Naranjo, Palenque, 
and Copan. But for the sixteenth century Span- 



SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 147 

iard archeology did not exist. His quest was still 
the same as that of Columbus and Behaim, one 
still inspired by the lure of treasure. 

To make the conquest of Guatemala, Cortes 
chose Pedro de Alvarado. Alvarado, of Badajos, 
whom we have already met, was of good figure 
and engaging countenance. He was athletic, too, 
and an excellent horseman, and his hair and beard 
were red — so red that the Indians were tempted 
to think him Quetzalcoatl, the Fair God, and 
christened him the Sun. But though in a sense a 
good comrade, Alvarado was easily roused to anger 
and to brutal vengeance. He left Mexico City for 
Guatemala on December 6, 1523, with one hun- 
dred and twenty horsemen, three hundred foot-sol- 
diers, a few pieces of artillery, and a large bod> of 
Mexicans. The principal Guatemalan tribes were 
in certain respects superior to the Aztecs and 
comparable to the Peruvians. Of their chief 
settlements, Utatlan was most celebrated. Mas- 
sive official buildings, religious and governmental, 
grouped about a court made it rudely magnificent. 
The subjugation of these people took the better 
part of two years. During this time Alvarado 
passed also into Salvador. Here, contrary to his 
expectation, he failed to get news of an interoceanic 



148 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS ' 

strait to the southward but heard of distant cities, 
built of stone and lime and densely populated — 
an echo, no doubt, of Quito and Cuzco. 

Some months later, Alvarado was met by news 
of a startling character. Cortes, it was declared, 
had died, not in Mexico but on the way to Hon- 
duras, whither he was conducting an expedition. 
If so, who would be his successor? It might well 
be Alvarado; and the conquistador at once made 
ready to repair to the seat of government in New 
Spain. Cortes was soon discovered to be far from 
dead, however, for toward the close of 1525 Al- 
varado received orders from him to repair straight- 
way to Honduras with all his forces. Vehemently 
declaring that all he possessed he owed to Hernan 
Cortes, and that with him he would die, Alvarado 
obeyed. But he learned on crossing the border 
that his master had changed his plans and had 
returned by sea to Vera Cruz, whereupon, in the 
midsummer of 1526, Alvarado retraced his own 
steps to Santiago, of which he had been a founder. 
But his venturesome spirit would not let him rest 
content with his single conquest. Comprehensive 
ideas had gripped him. He felt the imperious lure 
of golden dreams. He would go back to Mexico 
after all. He would see Cortes, secure his support, 



SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 149 

and sail for Spain. There he would win sanction 
to adventure where the South beckoned. He 
would be the man to complete the work of Balboa. 

But what of the expedition of Cortes into Hon- 
duras.'^ Originally it had not been Cortes's in- 
tention to make this expedition in person. He 
had chosen for the task Cristobal de Olid, a friend 
of Velasquez, Governor of Cuba, a "strong 
limbed" man and "a very Hector in fight.'* But 
although Olid sailed from Vera Cruz to Honduras, 
he had on the way, at Habana, gone back to his 
allegiance to Velasquez. It had thereupon become 
necessary to send after the recreant a sleuth in 
the person of Francisco de las Casas. At Triunfo 
de la Cruz, just south of Columbus's island of 
Guana j a. Olid had captured Las Casas and 
also Las Casas's prisoner, Gil Gonzalez, but had 
afterwards been mortally stabbed by his captives 
as he sat with them at meat. 

Cortes had been unfaithful to Velasquez; Olid 
had been unfaithful to Cortes; would Las Casas 
be any more faithful than Olid had been.? Such, 
in the mind of the Conqueror of Mexico, was now 
the question. "Villain whom I have reared and 
trusted," Cortes had exclaimed on hearing of the 
treachery of Olid, "by God and St. Peter he shall 



150 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

rue it!" As for Las Casas, it were well, perhaps, 
that he even have not too much the temptation of 
opportunity. So, late in October, 1524, Cortes 
set forth for the district of Tabasco, where he 
planned to cross the peninsula of Yucatan, then 
thought to be an island, to the northern coast of 
Honduras. He took a force of about one hundred 
horsemen and forty foot-soldiers, together with 
pages, musicians, jugglers, servants, and some 
three thousand Indians. A unique feature was a 
body of Aztec war chiefs and caciques from about 
Lake Tezcoco, including Quauhtemotzin, deposed 
Chief -of -Men of Tenochtitlan. These it had not 
been deemed prudent to leave in Mexico in the 
absence of the Conqueror. 

At Teotilac, a point between Iztapan and Lake 
Peten, Cortes became convinced that the deposed 
chiefs and caciques in his train were plotting to 
overthrow him and to restore in Mexico the Aztec 
regime, and he hanged two of them, Quauhtemot- 
zin and the war chief of Tlacopan, to a ceiba 
tree at midnight. Thus was tragedy invoked. But 
comedy did not range far behind. On an island 
in Lake Peten was a fairly large Indian settle- 
ment where Cortes left a badly lamed horse. The 
Indians, filled with veneration for the strange 



SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 151 

creature, fed it on flowers and birds, of which diet 
it speedily died. They then worshiped it in effigy 
in one of their temples as a god of thunder and 
lightning, a practice which was still maintained 
in 1614. 

The march to the southeast, begun after the 
Spanish mode with music and dancing, quickly 
became a thing of dolor. Rivers, forest-clad mo- 
rasses, lakes, and labyrinthine sloughs seemed 
everywhere; and when these at length ceased, 
there supervened a flinty mountain pass which 
cost the lives of men and of scores of horses. To 
the south lay the ruins of Palenque, but they 
awakened no interest, and it was five weary months 
before the exhausted band reached Golfo Dulce 
and the Spanish town of Nito. 

At Trujillo, where Cortes was planning yet 
further conquests, disturbing news overtook him. 
Quarrels had broken out among members of the 
administrative board to which he had left the 
government, and upon rumor of his death his 
property had been seized. His presence was sorely 
needed to save his fortune and his conquests. 
Resolving to return, he set out on April 25, 1526, 
and reached Vera Cruz late in May, so emaciated 
and broken in body as to be but a specter of his 



152 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

former self. In Mexico City — now a "city" in 
the true sense of the term — Cortes was welcomed 
with demonstrations of delight by Spaniards and 
Indians alike. He was still to all beholders the 
Spanish conquistador par excellence. 

Like Columbus, Cortes was an object of much 
envy on both sides of the Atlantic, and to make 
clear his doings to the Spanish King he took ship 
in 1528 for Spain. He debarked at Palos, where 
he is said to have met Pizarro; and in his train, 
by a freak of fate, was Pizarro's future Brutus, 
Juan de Rada. Charles V was at this time holding 
Court at Toledo, and here Cortes was met and 
escorted into his monarch's presence by a brilliant 
group of nobles. Needless to say, he did not come 
empty handed. Indeed, by comparison with what 
he brought, the offerings of Columbus to Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella seem mean and trivial. First, 
there was heaped treasure of gold and silver; then 
featherwork and embroidery; then specimens of 
arms and implements; strange plants and animals 
and beautiful birds. Imposing Indian chiefs, among 
them a son of Montezuma, graced his retinue, 
while amusement was contributed to the occasion 
by dwarfs, albinos, and human monstrosities. Cor- 
tes, like Columbus, would have knelt at the royal 



SPANIARDS IN CENTRAL AMERICA 153 

feet, but Charles, like Ferdinand and Isabella, raised 
up the suppliant and compelled him to speak sitting; 
and, when illness overtook him, the King personally 
visited him in his lodgings. 

In Spain the conqueror of Mexico contracted a 
brilliant marriage. Catalina, his first wife, had 
already died, and Marina, his Indian mistress, he 
had given as wife to one of his soldiers. He re- 
ceived the title of Marques del Valle de Oaxaca 
(Marquis of the Valley) and was made a Knight 
of Santiago. But amid these marks of royal favor 
misfortunes were not wanting. His father had 
died, and so had his beloved follower, the youthful 
Gonzalo de Sandoval. Capping all, he failed of 
his ambition to be made a duke, a glory which 
he coveted beyond any other. 



CHAPTER VI 

PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 
He that has partners has masters. — Pope Sixtus V. 

In the same year in which Cortes started for Hon- 
duras, Francisco Pizarro set out for the Birii 
country of Andagoya. Under Balboa, on the 
shores of the Gulf of San Miguel, he had heard of 
Biru as the gateway to a country far to the south 
where the people were rich and used ships and 
beasts of burden; and later, under Morales, he had 
paid in this quarter a hasty and bloody visit. 
Pizarro, native of Trujillo in Estremadura, — tall, 
shapely, sedate — was at this time about fifty- 
three years old. He undoubtedly was ambitious 
but he certainly was not inspired. His strength 
lay not in initiative but in dogged persistence and 
endurance. His conquest of Peru was in certain 
respects heroic, but it was not original. His plans, 
so to speak, w^re borrowed ready finished from 
Cortes. 

154 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 155 

Pizarro had three coadjutors or partners : Diego 
de Almagro, an old friend and fellow rancher in the 
Isthmus; Fernando de Luque, vicar of Panama; 
and Pedrarias Davila, the Governor. To the re- 
quirements of military command Pizarro was 
equal; but Almagro was needed to superintend 
the dispatch of supplies, and Luque to play softly 
the part of intercessor with Pedrarias. None of the 
triumvirate was young in years; but none had 
as yet won a fortune, and, as Sir Arthur Helps 
sagely remarks, the disappointed are ever young. 
Young in this sense, and withal energetic, Pizarro, 
Almagro, and Luque certainly were, for between 
mid-November in 1524 and the end of the year 
1528 they succeeded in demonstrating both the 
actuality and attainability of that Golden Peru 
which had been the objective of Balboa. Jn ac- 
complishing this, however, never perhaps did men 
suffer more. 

Starting from Panama with one vessel, some 
eighty men, and four horses, Pizarro touched at 
the Pearl Islands and stopped for six weeks at 
Puerto de la Hambre (Hunger Harbor) while the 
ship went back to the Pearl Islands for supplies. 
Meanwhile Almagro had sailed from Panama with 
a second ship and seventy men, and had sought for 



156 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Pizarro as far as Puerto de la Hambre and the 
river San Juan. But the latter, ere this, had re- 
traced his course to a spot in Tierra Firme called 
Chicama, and here Almagro finally overtook him. 
By this time both leaders had endured much. 
Almagro had lost an eye by an arrow, and Pizarro 
had nearly starved to death. 

It was at this stage of affairs that Pedrarias 
permitted himself to be outmaneuvered. He was 
preparing to enter Nicaragua and was loath to 
spare men to Pizarro and Almagro. In fact, he 
was on the point of ordering *'the dutiful one" 
back to Panama for good, so little did he perceive 
the glitter of gold in his direction, when his pur- 
pose was stayed by the persuasiveness of Luque 
and the resourcefulness of Almagro. 

Though Pizarro might not be intellectual, and 
though of a surety he was unlettered, he never- 
theless was astute. Amid his own active misery 
and that of his men he was shrewd enough to keep 
personally beyond the reach of the Governor at 
Panama. Not for nothing had he served the latter 
all these years. He knew his Pedrarias. So it was 
Almagro and not Pizarro who went to Panama, 
persuaded Pedrarias, for a consideration, to re- 
linquish his share in the enterprise to Gaspar de 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 157 

Espinosa, and returned with two ships, and with 
arms and supplies, to resume the great adventure 
to the south. 

The two leaders now had with them an unusual 
man, one "dextrous in his wit" — the pilot Bar- 
tolome Ruiz. The trio, with one hundred and 
sixty followers, sailed to the river San Juan and 
there separated. Almagro returned to Panama 
for more men; Pizarro held the ground gained — 
holding gains was ever a Pizarro trait; and Ruiz 
navigated the coast of Mundus Novus to the south- 
west. By this allotment of parts, opportunity — 
the spectacular chance — was all with Ruiz, and 
he perceived his advantage. Pushing boldly to 
and beyond the equator — the first navigator so 
to do in the Pacific — he rent the veil from before 
Peru. That is to say, he discovered the Island of 
Gallo and Bay of San Mateo, and, coming upon 
a raft propelled by a lateen sail and manned by 
Indians, he learned of Tumbez and also of Cuzco, 
where ruled the Inca and where there was vast 
golden treasure. 

The crucial hour in the Peruvian expedition 
came with the return of Ruiz to the river San 
Juan, bringing tidings of what he had seen and 
heard; and it was an hour txalted by the heroism 



158 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS ^ 

of Pizarro. Almagro had obtained about forty 
men in Panama, but it was realized that the Peru- 
vians were numerous and organized and that a 
strong force would be required to overcome them. 
So back once more to Panama went Almagro. 
There Pedro de los Rios governed in the stead of 
Pedrarias, but he was hardly more willing to supply 
men to Pizarro and Almagro than Pedrarias had 
been, for the men already with Pizarro, now with- 
drawn to the Island of Gallo, had succeeded in 
making it known that they were being led to cer- 
tain and probably futile death. 

Look out, Senor Governor, 
For the drover while he's near, 

they wrote in characteristic Spanish doggerel, re- 
ferring to Almagro; 

Since he goes home to get the sheep 
For the butcher [Pizarro] who stays here. 

Rios, in fact, insisted upon sending two ships in 
command of a jurist, Pedro Tafur, to bring home 
the men thus complaining. Still — and here the 
value of Luque in the partnership strongly ap- 
pears — the orders to Tafur were not so drastic 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 159 

but that Pizarro might proceed with the expedi- 
tion with such men as chose to abide the issue. 

On the Island of Gallo, therefore, Pizarro, upon 
the arrival of Tafur, assembled his men and put 
the situation squarely before them. On the one 
hand lay peril with possible riches; on the other, 
safety with assured poverty. The choice was 
theirs. Whether the Spanish chieftain actually 
drew in the sand with the point of his sword a line 
to the south of which he dramatically bade those 
pass who would follow him, is much to be doubted; 
but in imposing upon his men an unequivocal 
choice, he did something very like it. At all events, 
some sixteen men, including Ruiz the pilot, Pedro 
of Candia, a Greek, and an unnamed negro, 
stepped to his side; and with this little company 
Pizarro crossed from Gallo to the smaller but 
more easily defended Island of Gorgona to await 
the coming of Almagro preparatory to advancing 
toward Tumbez. On little Gorgona, "in a cloud- 
curtained sea, near a fearfully fascinating shore," 
for seven months he waited, starving. 

The topography of primitive Mexico was im- 
pressive enough: a low-lying Atlantic seaboard; a 
gradual rise through tropical vegetation and life to 



160 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

a plateau seventy-four hundred feet above sea-level ; 
guarding this plateau, a mountain wall accentuated 
by twin volcanic peaks seventeen thousand feet 
high; and within the wall, covering the plateau in 
considerable part, a cluster of lakes fresh and salt. 
But magnificent as was the Mexican scenery, in 
Peru, Nature, overpassing the impressive, became 
stupendous and sublime. The Peru of the Incas 
at the coming of Pizarro stretched along the Pacific 
coast of South America from the River Ancasmayu, 
north of Quito in Ecuador, to the River Maule, 
below Santiago in Chile, a region some twenty- 
seven hundred miles in length and comprehending 
the modern States of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, 
with part of Chile and Argentina. Its main fea- 
tures within the limits of Peru proper — the Peru 
of today — were an arid ocean strand less than 
one hundred miles in breadth; a double, at times 
treble, cordillera or mountain chain — the Andes 
— from one to two hundred miles in breadth; and 
a district of tropical forest conserving the sources 
of the Amazon. To these features should be added 
the Antarctic, or Humboldt, Current, flowing up 
-the western shore, a current so cold as to shroud 
the coast in mists and infuse a chill through even 
the tropics. 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 161 

The mere walls of the Andes at their ordinary 
elevation attained fourteen thousand feet and more. 
Then there were giant peaks ranging between 
seventeen and twenty-two thousand feet; and, on 
the verge of the Inca dominion, Aconcagua, chief 
of the Andean giants, to which nearly twenty- 
three thousand feet must be assigned. Mere alti- 
tude, however, was not in Peru the engrossing 
element in the sublime. That element was aloof- 
ness — a weird and stern inhumanity to which all 
observers have borne witness. " Savage solitudes " ; 
"somber grandeur"; "strange weirdness"; "awe- 
inspiring vastness"; "solemn immensity"; "a 
waste land where no man goes, or hath gone since 
the making of the world!" — such are the words 
of description used. 

But the grim topography of ancient Peru had 
its redeeming feature — sunlight — first on the 
mountain tops and then on the surface of Lake 
Titicaca. The lake — today about the size of 
Lake Erie, but in places some six or seven hun- 
dred feet deep, very irregular in shape, and studded 
with islands — lay within the plateau of Peru and 
Bolivia at an elevation of about thirteen thousand 
feet, the largest body of fresh water in the world 
at so great an elevation. 



II 



162 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

The light of the sun in the Titicaca Valley gave 
rise in the course of ages to the barbarism or semi- 
civilization of the Inca mode of life; but far earlier 
it gave rise to the Peruvian stage of development 
in the Megalithic or Great Stone period. "The 
Sun," to quote a Peruvian writer of Inca descent, 
"placed his children near the Lake of Titicaca." 
How long after the Stone Age the age of the Incas 
came is a question — several centuries, no doubt. 
Suffice it to say that the Megalithic folk were one 
day overthrown by invaders from the south, and 
the remnant of them took refuge, as is now con- 
jectured, in an inaccessible canyon in the valley 
of the Urubamba River, northwest of the site of 
Cuzco. Here, at Tampu Tocco (Machu Picchu.'^), 
a city peering thousands of feet down upon roaring 
rapids, the Incas were bred, and in due time — 
somewhere about the twelfth century — became 
strong enough to leave their fastness, retake 
possession of the Titicaca region, and begin that 
movement of conquest and organization which, 
with Cuzco as a center, resulted in an empire vaster 
than was ruled from Moscow or Aix-la-Chapelle, 
from Bagdad or Granada. 

At the coming of Pizarro, the distinctive fea- 
tures of Peruvian culture — features wherein it 



PIZARRO'S 
CONQUEST OF PERU 



1531-1533 

Scalf 1: 18.000,000 




PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 163 

differed palpably from the culture of the Aztecs — 
were two: centralized authority in government and 
monotheism in religion. The Peruvians (Quichua 
tribes) were a far less hardy race than the Aztecs, 
yet despite their softness they achieved things 
which the Aztecs failed to accomplish. In a sense 
they were the Asiatics of America; both actively 
and passively they gave evidence of an aptitude 
for despotic statecraft. Unlike the Aztecs, they 
ruled conquered tribes by direct interposition 
through governors and garrisons ; by imposing their 
own language (Quichua); and by the establish- 
ment of military highways. When Cortes invaded 
Mexico, Aztec authority, an authority limited to 
the levying of tribute, was respected throughout 
an area about the size of the State of Massa- 
chusetts. When Pizarro invaded Peru, Inca au- 
thority was much better respected throughout an 
area about equal to that of the United States east of 
the Mississippi River. In a word, by the time when 
Pizarro arrived, the Peruvians had largely passed 
out of the clan stage of development into the na- 
tional stage. Particularism, or localism, with its 
delegated and revocable leadership within the tribe, 
and its leadership by confederation as between 
tribes, had given way to incipient monarchy. 



164 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

The Peruvian religion, like the religion of Old 
Persia, centered in the worship of the Sun. And, 
forsooth, what more natural than that the orb 
to which in peculiar measure the culture of Peru 
owed its existence should become the chief ob- 
ject of the adoration of the Peruvian tribesman! 
"The dawn — was it not Birth to him? The 
mid-day splendor — was it not Power to him? 
The sunset — typified it not Death to him?" 
The Inca himself was Sun-begotten, and, being 
so, bore divine attributes. No Indian official in 
North America or in South — in Florida, in Mexi- 
co, or in Mundus Novus — could compare in rank 
with the Inca, politically a king and religiously 
a god. 

Centralization of governmental authority in 
Peru is decisively shown by the social organization 
which prevailed. The primary unit was the family 
of five persons, and thence greater units were de- 
rived by multiplying by ten until there was ob- 
tained the ultimate unit of fifty thousand, the head 
of which was directly responsible to the Inca. 
Clanship, however, though outgrown politically, 
survived economically, for land belonged to the 
local community and not to the family or individ- 
ual. In agriculture the Peruvians were adept. 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 165 

They produced the finest of cotton, and grew ex- 
cellent maize and potatoes. They made use of 
the vicuna and the alpaca as sources of the finest 
wool. But, like all things Peruvian, farming was 
rigidly supervised and controlled from Cuzco, the 
produce being divided into three equal parts, 
whereof two went to the state and one only to the 
producer. 

Countless were the ways in which Inca rule 
made itself felt. Everybody was enumerated; 
everybody must dwell in a fixed district and follow 
a fixed occupation; and, in order that the multi- 
tude of tribes incorporated into the nation might 
readily be distinguished, each tribe must use a 
distinctive dress and method of wearing the hair. 
Caste too was universal. Below the Inca and con- 
stituting a nobility were lords, priests, warriors, 
and civil governors; and below the nobility, con- 
stituting commoners, were shepherds of llamas, 
hunters, farmers, and artificers. 

The softness which characterized the Peruvians 
physically, characterized them also intellectually. 
They excelled in the arts — in pottery, in weaving, 
and in the fashioning of gold, silver, and bronze. 
Literature they produced in the form of dramas, 
love songs, and hymns of worship — of worship, 



166 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

at times, of something more universal than the 
Sun: 

Oh hear me! 

From the sky above. 

In which thou mayest be, 

From the sea beneath, 

In which thou mayest be. 

Creator of the world. 

Maker of all men ! 

But they evolved no system of writing; not even a 
pictographic one, using only knotted and twisted 
cords, called quipus, to perpetuate their thoughts. 
At the time of the Spanish conquest of America 
there was more promise for the future in the Hel- 
lenic-like barbarism, plastic though crude, of the 
Aztecs, than in the Asiatic-like barbarism, rigid 
though polished, of the Peruvians. 

But what of Francisco Pizarro, Pedro de Candia, 
and the others of Pizarro's band whom we left 
facing starvation on the little Island of Gorgona 
off the coast of Ecuador, and awaiting the coming 
of Almagro from Panama with reinforcements.? 
Ruiz the pilot was not with them, for he had re- 
turned north with Tafur. At the end of seven 
months, however, he came in Almagro's stead, and 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 167 

the company set out, as Pizarro had planned, 
for Tumbez, which is situated on the gulf later 
called Guayaquil. 

Their course took them past Cape Pasado, the 
limit of Ruiz's exploratory voyage, past the vol- 
canic peaks of Cotopaxi and Chimborazo, and in 
twenty days they reached Tumbez. Here Pizarro 
sent ashore parties under Pedro de Candia and 
others. The messengers were greeted as superior 
beings, very much as Cortes and his followers were 
greeted at San Juan de Ulua. Their faces were 
fair; they wore long beards; and their identity 
as Children of the Light, that Light which in 
Peru meant so much, was considered established. 
With them, however, on one occasion went the 
negro, and to fit him into satisfactory relations 
with the emissaries of the Dawn was found difficult. 
They tried washing, but to no effect; and the Peru- 
vians were obliged to accept him for what he 
was — one not to be understood but simply to be 
enjoyed. The report of Pizarro's messengers as 
to what was to be seen at Tumbez — a fortress, a 
temple, comely Virgins of the Sun, vases of gold — 
abundantly confirmed the earlier report of Ruiz, 
but Pizarro had few men (the new Governor at 
Panama had seen to that) and he resolved to 



168 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

betake himself directly to Spain to lay his discov- 
ery before the King. 

There he arrived early in 1528, accompanied by 
the Greek, Pedro de Candia. By the 26th of July, 
at Toledo, he had met Charles V, who created him 
Governor of all he might discover for a distance of 
two hundred leagues "to the south of Santiago," 
a river entering the sea just below the latitude of 
the Island of Gallo. The King made Almagro and 
Luque the Captain and the Bishop of Tumbez; 
Bartolome Ruiz, Grand Pilot of the South Sea; 
Pedro de Candia, Chief of Artillery; and the heroes 
of the Isle of Gorgona, knights and cavaliers. 

From Toledo, Pizarro went to Trujillo, his 
native town, and drew to his support his brothers, 
Hernando, Juan, Gonzalo, and Martin of Alcan- 
tara, all capable, all brave, and all except the first 
described as, "like Pizarro himself, illegitimate, 
poor, ignorant, and avaricious." The proposed 
expedition to Peru, unlike the expeditions of prior 
Spanish adventurers, did not attract followers; 
and it was with only one hundred and eighty men 
and thirty horses that in December, 1531, a year 
after his return from Spain, the Estremaduran 
was able to set sail with three ships from Panama 
for Tumbez. 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 169 

In the Peruvian conquest there may be said to 
have been three definite stages : one of waiting and 
preparation; one of active hostihties; and one of 
accompHshment. The stage of waiting and prep- 
aration, of patience and endurance, has already 
been glanced at. Here Pizarro shone. From the 
days when, under Ojeda, Balboa, and Pedrarias, 
he had served on the terrible Isthmus, to those 
when he challenged riches and renown on the 
hardly less terrible coast of Peru, there was nothing 
that he did not suffer. At San Juan River, toils 
of the jungle within reach of the hideous dangling 
boa and of the stealthy alligator; on the Island 
of Gallo, nauseating food, thunder, lightning, and 
torrential rain; on Gorgona, plague of insects, in- 
cessant, intolerable, inescapable. All these things, 
with starvation often added, Pizarro suffered, but 
though in distress he did not repine but bravely 
endured. 

Tumbez he reached in the spring of 1532, and 
here the invaders were joined by Hernando de 
Soto with one hundred men and fifty horses from \^ 
Nicaragua. Thus reenforced, Pizarro, as a means 
of establishing himself in the country he had set 
out to despoil and convert, resolved to found a 
town. Choosing a site near the sea, some thirty 



170 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS ^ 

leagues to the south of Tumbez, he founded San 
Miguel, the first European settlement in the do- 
main ruled by the Incas. Having secured a base, 
the next step was to locate and appraise the forces 
of opposition. He accordingly sent De Soto, with 
a party of horse, along the foot of the first of the 
several great chains of the Andes, to gather infor- 
mation. What Pizarro learned was that in Peru 
there was at that time a legitimate ruler named 
"Cuzco, son of old Cuzco," and that he had a 
brother, Atahualpa, who was in rebellion but to 
whom Fortune had been so far favorable that he 
had defeated young Cuzco and gone on conquering 
the land southward to a place called Caxamarca. ^ 
Caxamarca, Pizarro learned, was beyond the 
mountain wall which confronted him, but at a 
distance of only twelve or fifteen days' march. 

Traditionally the first Inca of Peru was Manco 
Ccapac, who flourished about 1100 and built or 
rebuilt the town of Cuzco. Historically, how- 
ever, the first Inca was Viracocha, whose reign fell 
somewhere about 1380. In 1500 the Inca was 
Huayna Ccapac — the "old Cuzco" of Pizarro's 
informants — and under him it was that the Inca 
dominion was projected northward beyond Quito 
and southward into Chile. Huayna Ccapac, **old 



PIZARRO AND THE INC AS 171 

Cuzco," was succeeded by his legitimate son Huas- 
car, young Cuzco. But Huascar had a brother, 
Atahualpa, son of Huayna by a concubine, daugh- 
ter of the last independent ruler of Quito, and, 
in order to secure to him a share in the succession, 
Huayna at his death divided the royal possessions, 
assigning to Atahualpa the Quito inheritance and 
to Huascar the remainder. The results usual under 
such circumstances followed: strife between the 
brothers arose, and in the contest not only had Ata- 
hualpa triumphed but he had succeeded in making 
Huascar captive. 

As between Pizarro and Atahualpa the situation 
was quite like that which a dozen years before had 
obtained between Cortes and Montezuma. In 
both instances, invaders, believed to be engen- 
dered of the Sea or dropped from the Sky, sought 
from a seaboard base to overcome rulers estab- 
lished in the mountains as protectors of capitals 
which were believed to be the repositories of un- 
told wealth. There were, however, certain differ- 
ences. The way to Atahualpa, barred as it was by 
the mighty outer wall of the Andes, was more 
difficult than the way to Montezuma. But, off- 
setting this, Cortes's advance was hindered by 
every subtlest art of Indian subterfuge, while that 



172 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS ^ 

of Pizarro was uninterfered with. Then again, 
Montezuma had, as he thought, laid for Cortes a 
trap in Mexico-Tenochtitlan itself; whereas Ata- 
hualpa, for aught that appears, received Pizarro at 
Caxamarca with such sublime faith in his own 
abounding resources that he felt for him little 
other than contempt. But let the narrative dis- 
close its own tale. 

It was in September that Pizarro set out from 
San Miguel. His force was in all one hundred and 
seventy-seven men, sixty-seven of whom were 
horsemen. At first the country was compara- 
tively level, watered by mountain-fed aqueducts, 
and set with orchards and fields of waving grain. 
Withal the air was sweet with the breath of flowers, 
and the people were friendly. But the soldiers, 
some of them, showed discontent; and to meet it 
Pizarro promptly sent back to San Miguel nine 
men who lacked heart for the great enterprise. 

Cortes, under more trying circumstances, had 
dealt with disaffection by scuttling his ships and 
by meting out drastic punishments. Yet to the 
men of Cortes the evidence of riches ahead was far 
stronger than to the men of Pizarro, for the latter 
had beheld naught to compare with the gold and 
silver wheels presented to Cortes by Montezuma. 



PIZARRO AND THE INC AS 173 

To Pizarro, therefore, relieved of his disaffected 
element but facing mountains and with no treasure 
in sight, it remained to urge forward his command 
by appealing to their piety — their sense of duty 
as propagandists of the Faith. Besides being 
primitive, proud, and romantic, the Spaniard, it 
will be recalled, was devout. Devoutness, indeed, 
as a spur to action, held with him a place second 
only to avarice. 

Pizarro's chief obstacle was the Andes, with 
"their crests of snow glittering high in the heavens 
— such a wild chaos of magnificence and beauty as 
no other mountain scenery in the world [could] 
show." Up this barrier struggled foot-soldiers and 
horsemen, the latter dismounted and tugging at 
their beasts. Here the path hugged the base of a 
toppling cliff; there it shunned a reeling abyss; 
while ever above the crawling Spanish line hung, 
greedy for mishap, that obscene bird of carrion, the 
Peruvian condor. Near the summit of the range 
the invaders came upon one of the military roads 
of the Incas, a road which connected Cuzco with 
Quito, and which in point of length has been 
likened to a conceivable highway connecting Calais 
with Constantinople. It was a road, however, 
upon which no wheel turned, for, unlike the early 



174 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Egyptians, the Peru- 
vians, with whom "everything stopped short," 
were unacquainted with the principle of the wheel. 
On this journey upward to Caxamarca, this New 
World anabasis, Pizarro was met and waited 
upon, as Cortes had been on his journey, by suc- 
cessive embassies. One came under the escort of 
De Soto, whom the Spanish leader had sent to 
reconnoiter, and met Pizarro at the foot of the 
range; while the others, whereof there were two, 
met him near the summit. All brought gifts: the 
first, an elaborate drinking-cup of stone, woolen 
stuffs embroidered in gold and silver, and perfume; 
the second, several llamas; and the third, Peruvian 
sheep, chicha or "fermented juice of the maize," 
to employ a delicate periphrasis, and, what to the 
Spaniards was more to the point, "golden goblets" 
from which to quaff this beverage. Mid-Novem- 
ber was now at hand and Pizarro had bested his 
great obstacle. He had scaled the Andes. Be- 
neath him spread a valley, stream-traversed and 
highly cultivated, and in this valley he descried 
three things : the town of Caxamarca, steam rising 
from hot mineral springs, and — did his pulse 
quicken.f^ — "a white cloud of pavilions covering 
the ground as thick as snowflakes." 



PIZARRO AND THE INC AS 175 

Pizarro entered Caxamarca on the 15th of No- 
vember at the hour of vespers. His first act was 
to send De Soto with twenty horsemen to announce 
to Atahualpa his arrival; and his second, to send 
his brother Hernando after De Soto with twenty 
more horsemen as a reenforcement. The Inca, a 
man of thirty, sat at the door of his tent, cross- 
legged on a low cushion, surrounded by male and 
female attendants. He wore a tunic and robe, but 
what distinguished him as a ruler was the head- 
dress, the borla. This consisted of a fringed cord 
of red vicuna wool wound several times around the 
head, the fringe depending over the eyes. As lord 
of both Quito and Cuzco, and especially of Quito 
through his mother, Atahualpa would no doubt 
have felt himself entitled to wear (as later he did 
wear) the insignia of Quito, a string of royal 
emeralds. Seated on his cushion, the Inca held his 
eyes fixed upon the ground; nor did he raise them 
or otherwise respond when Hernando Pizarro, 
with grave Spanish mien, invited him to visit his 
brother in the town. His thoughts — what were 
they.f^ In all probability the question in the mind 
of Montezuma in the case of Cortes: Were these 
newcomers gods? 

It was the horse, as we have seen, that more than 



176 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

aught else in Indian eyes gave to the Spaniard the 
seeming of a god. Atahualpa had kept himself in- 
formed regarding this weird creature, and in a 
measure was fortified against the terror of him. 
Through messengers from the Quito country he 
had learned that the Spaniard and his horse were 
not "all one animal," for on the coast a rider had 
been observed to fall from a horse. Confirming 
this idea of the separability of horse and rider, had 
come news that at night the horses were unsaddled. 
Nor was the horse immortal, for a cacique of the 
neighborhood of San Miguel had sent word that 
he personally had killed one. 

Glancing up at length from his reverie, Ata- 
hualpa said to Hernando Pizarro that the Span- 
iards could be no great warriors, for the San Miguel 
curaca (cacique) had killed three, besides a horse. 
Nettled at this speech so weighed and measured 
in its audacity, Hernando Pizarro replied that one 
horse, let alone riders, could conquer the whole 
country; and, as if practically to substantiate 
the claim, De Soto, the best mounted man in 
the Spanish group, struck spurs into his steed, 
dashed across the plain, and, w^heeling in graceful 
circles, reined in the animal so close to the Inca 
that foam from his sides bespattered the royal 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 177 

garments. But Atahualpa, self-schooled against 
terror of the horse, did not flinch. To him evi- 
dently the Spaniards, if gods at all, were not for- 
midable ones; and when he consented, as now he 
did, to visit Pizarro in camp the next day, it was, 
as the chronicle has it, "with the smile of a man 
who did not very much esteem us." 

That night the Spaniards knew fear. The 
twinkling distant camp fires of the Peruvian host — 
fires likened in multitude to the stars of heaven — 
impressed them with a sense of their numerical 
inferiority, and again Pizarro found it expedient to 
warm their zeal and stiffen their courage by ap- 
pealing to them as sons of the Church and prop- 
agandists of the Faith. As for Pizarro himself, 
he had a plan which had been long in his mind: 
he would seize the person of Atahualpa, even as 
Cortes had seized the person of Montezuma, and 
all would be well. 

The town of Caxamarca itself was not large. Its 
distinguishing feature, however, was an extensive 
triangular plaza — "larger than any plaza in 
Spain" — enclosed on two sides by long low build- 
ings. These buildings may have been communal 
dwellings, for they are spoken of as divided on the 
interior into blocks, each block comprising a suite 



12 



178 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

of rooms. If the buildings in question were com- 
munal, they serve to illustrate Peruvian nation- 
making as in this quarter something yet in process, 
the clan here not having been superseded by the 
family. But there were other buildings — survi- 
vals of the early medicine lodge and council lodge 
— temples and great halls, all very much as in 
Mexico-Tenochti tl an . 

Of the great halls there were three, each giving 
through a wide opening upon the plaza. In one, 
Pizarro stationed a squadron of horsemen under 
Hernando Pizarro; in another, a squadron under 
De Soto; and in the third, a squadron under a 
doughty cavalier, newly arrived, Sebastian de 
Benalcazar. The foot-soldiers as a body he placed 
in concealment round about; but twenty such, 
picked for their prowess, he attached to his own 
person, taking with them a central station, well 
concealed, whence he could sally forth in any direc- 
tion. Pedro de Candia, be it added, trained upon 
the plaza, from a "fortress" above it, the artillery 
of the invaders — two falconets. 

Such was the disposition of the Spanish leaders 
when, about noon of the 16th of November, Ata- 
hualpa emerged from his camp on his way to visit 
Pizarro in Caxamarca, the lion in his lair. He 



PIZARRO AND THE INC AS 179 

was attended by thousands, and the spectacle 
offered was that of Montezuma advancing to meet 
Cortes. But when within a short distance of the 
town, what should the Peruvian monarch do but 
stop the progress and prepare to pitch his tents! 
This Pizarro saw with dismay, for his men, long 
kept at high tension, must speedily find relief in 
action or succumb to fear. He accordingly dis- 
patched an earnest request to Atahualpa that he 
resume the march and enter the town that evening, 
where every arrangement for his reception and 
entertainment had been made. 

The Inca granted this request and just before 
sunset the "Child of the Sun" passed the gates. 
In front, as with Montezuma, came runners, clear- 
ing the way of dirt and obstructions and singing 
sonorous songs — songs pronounced "hellish" in 
the chronicle. Then came dancers. Then caciques 
of divers grades bearing "hammers" of silver or 
copper, and conspicuous for checkered or white 
liveries. Those immediately about the Inca were 
caciques or noblemen of special dignity, wearing 
head-dresses ornamented with gold and silver, 
breast armor of gold plates, and great ear-studs. 
All more or less seem to have been distinguished 
by vestments of blue — that azure (azul or sky 



180 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

color) so marked and evidently so significant in the 
apparel of Montezuma. 

The Inca himself, like the " Chief -of -Men, *' was 
borne aloft in a litter. He sat on a throne of gold I 
within a baldaquin lined with the brilliant plu- 
mage of the parrakeet and covered with gold and | 
silver plates. A man of vigor — large, with bold 
eyes somewhat bloodshot — his aspect was com- 
manding and even fierce. As lord of Quito, he 
wore the royal emeralds. As Child of the Sun, he 
wore the borla; and in addition a golden diadem 
garnished with the wing feathers of the caraquen- 
que. It was his right, moreover, to be preceded by 
a standard bearer carrying a banner emblazoned 
with the rainbow. In any event he was an im- 
pressive figure, as, dividing to the right and left, 
his numerous escort fell away, leaving him alone, 
the observed of all observers in the plaza. 

No Spaniard was in sight, and Atahualpa was 
perplexed. "What has become of these fellows.''" 
he demanded with impatience. Hereupon Pizarro 
sent forth to meet the Indian ruler, and to account 
to him for the presence of the Spaniards in his 
country, the priest and spiritual leader of the ex- 
pedition, Vicente de Valverde, later Bishop of Cuz- 
co. Valverde of course could speak to Atahualpa 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 181 

only through the interpreter, a young Indian cap- 
tured at Tumbez, named FelHpillo or Little Philip, 
who was for the purpose a feeble dependence, in no 
sense a second Marina or Aguilar. What Father 
Valverde undertook to impress upon Atahualpa 
was that there was one true God; that He had 
sent to earth his Son Jesus Christ; that Christ, be- 
ing put to death, had left his power in the hands 
of St. Peter, who, dying, had passed it on to the 
Popes of Rome. One of the Popes, the one now 
alive, had heard that the Indians of the world, 
instead of worshiping the true God, "adored idols 
and likenesses of the devil." Thereupon he had 
given it into the hands of " Charles, King of Spain 
and Monarch of the whole earth, " to "conquer the 
Indian nations" and bring them to "the knowl- 
edge of God and the obedience of the Church." 
To effect this conquest, Charles had commis- 
sioned "Don Francisco Pizarro — now here." 
"If thou shalt deny and refuse to obey," fer- 
vently exclaimed the priest, "know that thou 
shalt be persecuted with fire and sword without 
mercy !" 

What Atahualpa probably gathered out of this 
harangue, as rendered in what has been called 
the "deplorable Cuzcan" of Fellipillo, was that 



182 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

a distant mysterious lord — a "white stranger's" 
lord — operating as the agent of a mysterious 
deity — or of several such, for the Trinity had 
figured in the discourse — claimed his allegiance 
and tribute and meant to deprive him and the 
people of independence. Fear of the Spaniards as 
themselves gods, or at least preternatural beings, 
does not seem to have much dwelt in the mind of 
the Inca, for observing that Father Valverde held 
in his hand a book, the Bible, whence he had de- 
rived the matter of his exhortation, Atahualpa 
demanded to see it. It was clasped, and the Indian 
was unable to open it. The priest stepped to the 
side of the litter to give help, but Atahualpa, re- 
senting the intrusion, forced the clasps back, ran 
his eyes helplessly through the leaves, and cast the 
holy volume violently upon the ground. 

Not only did the Inca spurn the Word of God, 
but he at the same time said that he knew how the 
Spaniards had maltreated his people all the way 
from Tumbez, even to burning some of them alive, 
and that he required reparation. Here then was 
defiance complete — defiance of all the Powers : of 
the Powers Temporal as well as of those Spirit- 
ual; of Emperor, and of Francisco Pizarro, as well 
as of God, Christ, St. Peter, and the Pope; and 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 183 

punishment was called for. The hour — the mo- 
ment — had come ! 

On hearing Father Valverde's report, Pizarro 
informed his brother Hernando. The latter in turn 
informed Pedro de Candia, who discharged his 
falconets — the signal agreed upon — and the 
horsemen everywhere burst from cover. In ad- 
vance of all, sword in hand, and shouting "San- 
tiago," ran Pizarro. His object was the royal litter, 
but ere he could reach it the attendants of Ata- 
hualpa had interposed themselves, and there en- 
sued a furious melee. In the end, amid great 
slaughter, the litter was overturned and Atahual- 
,pa, the god-descended, his robes in tatters, dia- 
dem and horla torn from his brow, was dragged 
forth a captive. 

Montezuma fell before Cortes, a victim of vacil- 
lation, the result of timidity bred of superstition. 
Atahualpa fell before Pizarro, a victim of assurance 
which was the result of arrogance. Entering Caxa- 
marca late in the day, Atahualpa had notified 
Pizarro that he would spend the night within its 
gates, but with only a fraction of his forces, and 
these "unarmed." What need, forsooth, of arms, 
of copper-pointed spears, of bows and arrows, and 
of lasses, had Atahualpa? Was he not Inca.? Was 



184 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

he not literally Child of the Sun? " Your God, " he 
is said to have boasted to Father Valverde, "was, 
you say, slain by men, the work of his hands; my 
god," pointing proudly to the sinking Sun, "dies 
but to live again!" 

That November evening, 1532, Pizarro and Ata- 
hualpa supped together. Breaking bread with the 
defeated seems to have been an amiable if some- 
what ironical Spanish custom, whether those so 
honored were themselves Spaniards or not. Cris- 
tobal de Olid had supped with his prisoners Gil 
Gonzalez and Francisco de las Casas, but only to 
have his hospitality requited by slashes at his 
throat. In the case of Atahualpa such requital 
was not to be apprehended. The Inca was too 
dazed to think of trying it himself, and his followers 
were too profoundly overawed. But, dazed though 
Atahualpa was, he did not so remain. On the mor- 
row after his overthrow he noticed that, while the 
Spaniards brought in as booty many bales of beau- 
tifully woven woolen and cotton fabrics, the things 
which as booty they esteemed most were the royal 
utensils of gold and silver. If it were gold and 
silver the white strangers coveted — he personally 
much preferred glass — these metals abounded in 
Peru. Why not purchase with them his own 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 185 

freedom? Freedom was valuable to him just 
then, for the legitimate Inca, Huascar his brother, 
was himself a captive, and when the latter should 
learn of the captivity of Atahualpa, what plots — 
plots even with the invaders — might he not con- 
coct against him? One day, therefore, as he and 
Pizarro stood in a chamber of Pizarro's quarters, 
he suddenly offered to cover the floor with gold if 
his freedom were granted. 

The offer provoked only a smile, and Atahualpa 
was piqued. He stepped proudly to the wall, and 
indicating a point thereon as high as he could 
reach, offered to fill the entire room to that point 
with gold. He also offered to fill a smaller room, 
adjoining, twice over with silver. The only condi- 
tions he made were that the metals should not 
first be melted down, but should retain the form 
of the objects into which they had been wrought, 
and that he should have two months within which 
to fulfill his undertaking. 

Then ensued one of the most wonderful episodes 
in history. Each day there went forth from the 
presence of Atahualpa couriers to the four quar- 
ters of the Empire; and ere long, in answer, porters 
began to appear bearing all manner of gold and sil- 
ver objects: jars, vases, ewers, salvers, and goblets 



186 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

from the temples; to say naught of hammered 
golden sheets, an occasional "throne," "pedestal," 
or "sun." They brought, too, wonderful things 
from the official dwellings — the "palaces" — of 
the Inca: such, for example, as "fountains designed 
to emit sparkling jets of gold"; miniature gold 
birds and beasts; trees also; plants with leaves, 
flowers, and fruit; fields of maize with leaves, heads, 
canes, roots, and flowers; and flowers of the field 
with petals, stems, and leaves. So gleaming indeed 
were the long files of porters under their golden 
packs, that as beheld afar they seemed veritable 
threads of gold caught from point to point across 
the landscape. 

A circumstance which helped materially in col- 
lecting the treasure was that Hernando Pizarro 
and Hernando de Soto had conceived for Ata- 
hualpa a genuine liking. A suite of rooms was 
assigned him, and within these he maintained his 
customary state. Here he amused himself with his 
concubines; here with great animation and skill he 
played dice and chess, games learned from his con- 
querors; and here he received his vassals in audi- 
ence — none of whom, however great, presumed 
to enter before him without first removing his 
sandals and placing a burden on his back. 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 187 

The point to which Atahualpa had agreed to fill 
Pizarro's chamber with gold was some nine feet 
from the floor, and the floor dimensions were about 
seventeen by twenty- two feet. As this space of 
over three thousand cubic feet began to gradually 
lessen under the heaps and piles of gold thrown 
into it, did Francisco Pizarro reflect? Twenty 
years before — first in Comogre's country, then 
on the peak in Darien, and finally on the shores 
of the Gulf of San Miguel — he, a dutiful lieuten- 
ant to Balboa, had heard intimations of Peru, of 
Peru the golden somewhere to the south. Since 
then Balboa had forfeited his head, and he alone 
had found Peru. Had Columbus found it, or Be- 
haim, or Alonso Pinzon, how each would have 
wrestled with geography to prove that he had 
found, if not Cathay and Cipangu, at least India, 
at least the Golden Chersonese ! Columbus on his 
fourth voyage would have seen in Peru — capping 
"the stem of the earth," as from its altitude it 
might well have been thought to do — the "Earth- 
ly Paradise"; and to Cortes, had he found it, 
it would have answered, more even than did 
Mexico, to the requirements of that land whence 
"Solomon is said to have brought the gold for 
the Temple." 



188 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

It took longer to fill Pizarro's chamber with gold 
up to the nine-foot point than Atahualpa had 
counted on, for, as the drain became- severe, the 
public guardians, especially in the temples, began 
to secrete their treasures. At length, Pizarro wax- 
ing highly impatient, Atahualpa, who too was 
impatient, proposed that the former send out col- 
lectors of his own. They might go to Pachacamac, 
Peru's shrine to *'an unknown god," very ancient 
and very rich; or they might go directly to Cuzco, 
where more than anywhere else the gold and silver 
of the Inca government was massed; and at either 
place they might help themselves. They went to 
both places, and what they brought back was, 
from Pachacamac, twenty-seven loads (cargas) of 
gold and two thousand marks of silver; and from 
Cuzco, two hundred loads of gold and twenty-five 
loads of silver. A "load" (333 pounds) was what 
could be carried by four Indians, and as part of 
several such loads from Cuzco there were brought 
seven hundred gold plates stripped from the 
Temple of the Sun, each plate being ten or twelve 
inches wide, and weighing from four to twelve 
pounds. 

It was now June, 1533, and although the nine- 
foot level in Pizarro's chamber was not yet quite 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 189 

attained, it was deemed expedient to melt down the 
collection and value it preparatory to a division. 
So valued, it reached a total of 1,326,539 'pesos de 
oro; or, counting the purchasing power of a peso as 
$11.67, nearly $15,500,000 in American money. 
Nor did this include the silver of the smaller cham- 
ber, which was estimated at 51,610 marks. No such 
treasure had ever before been amassed by a con- 
queror. So gigantic was it, so staggering, that had 
Pizarro sought for it a parallel, he must needs have 
betaken himself, not to Marco Polo's East or that 
of Ibn Batuta, but to the East of the Arabian 
Nights Entertainments. "The genie [so runs a 
familiar tale] returned with forty black slaves each 
bearing on his head a heavy tray of pure gold; . . . 
each tray was covered with silver tissue embroid- 
ered with flowers of gold. . . . The genie dis- 
appeared but presently returned with the forty 
slaves, ten of whom carried each a purse contain- 
ing a thousand pieces of gold. . . . But most of 
all to be coveted were four large buffets profusely 
furnished with large flagons, basins, and cups, all 
of massy gold." So was it with Aladdin, and 
so, without hyperbole, was it with Pizarro. 

Desiring to impress his King with the wealth of 
Peru, that Peru which he alone had conquered. 



190 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Pizarro, in the same year in which he melted down 
his treasure, sent to Spain his brother Hernando 
with the fifth portion belonging to the Crown and 
with half a million pesos de oro besides. The cus- 
tom-house at Seville, it is said, overflowed with 
"solid ingots," not to mention "vases, animals, 
flowers, and fountains, all of pure gold." The 
populace were dazed; the Court aghast, for success- 
ful adventurers were not loved at Court; and the 
King, delighted. Cortes had created a flurry with 
his "wheels of gold and silver" sent home in 1519; 
and had all of his "gleanings" from Montezuma 
been got together in one place and at one time, 
they would have made an enduring impression. 
But for the most part Spain never saw them, for 
they were either captured by Francis I of France 
or lost during the noche triste. When Cortes and 
Pizarro met at Palos, in 1528, the cry in Spain was 
all "Cortes and Mexico!" After the coming of 
Hernando Pizarro to Seville, in 1534, the tables 
were completely turned. The cry then, and ever 
after as long as Cortes and Pizarro lived, was 
"Pizarro and Peru!" 

But to go back a little. It was midsummer, 
1533, and Pizarro had decided to march to Cuzco, 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 191 

his real objective since the day when Bartolome 
Ruiz had heard of it and its splendor from the 
Indians on the raft off Tumbez. Seven full months 
had he lingered at Caxamarca, and all the gold 
that could be gathered there he had obtained. 
Besides, Almagro was again in Peru. He had 
landed late in December, 1532, with three ships 
piloted by Ruiz, and with a force consisting of 
one hundred and fifty foot-soldiers and fifty horse- 
men. Pizarro was glad of the reenforcement. 
Whether he was glad of the personal presence of 
Almagro is not so certain. Almagro was Pizarro's 
*'partner" — his only active partner, for Luque 
was now dead — and, to apply the motto of 
the present chapter, "he that has partners has 
masters." 

If Almagro was Pizarro's "master," this was a 
relationship for the future to disclose. Up to the 
present Almagro's only recompense for toil and a 
lost eye had been the captaincy of Tumbez, what- 
ever that might import, and against Pizarro his 
soul was bitter. Nor was the news which greeted 
him at San Miguel, whither he came from Tumbez, 
of a sort to appease. Pizarro had scaled the Andes ; 
had seized the Inca of Peru; and from the latter 
was exacting an enormous ransom. In these 



192 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

momentous transactions, where did Almagro, Pi- 
zarro's "partner," figure? Did he figure at all? 
Almagro determined to see. With his men he, too, 
scaled the Andes and in February, 1533, was at 
Caxamarca. Hence Pizarro's decision to march 
to Cuzco; for not only had he exhausted the gold to 
be obtained at Caxamarca, but, in order to meet 
the expectations and demands of his followers, now 
by Almagro's arrival quite doubled in number, he 
needed yet more gold. Of the fifteen and one-half 
million dollars in Pizarro's hands, as revealed by 
the melting down and weighing of his main treas- 
ure, Almagro's company would seem to have been 
quieted with some two hundred and thirty-three 
thousand dollars. Their harvest, it was explained 
to them, awaited them in Cuzco. What Almagro 
himself consented to receive is nowhere told. To 
Pizarro and his men, as those by whom thus far 
the conquest had actually been achieved, there 
fell immense sums : to Pizarro himself, nearly seven 
hundred thousand dollars, to say nothing of two 
thousand three hundred marks of silver; to Her- 
nando Pizarro, nearly three hundred and sixty- 
three thousand dollars, without counting silver; 
to De Soto, two hundred and seventy thousand 
dollars, not counting silver; to each horseman, one 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 193 

hundred and three thousand dollars; and to the 
foot-soldiers, the most meritorious of them, nearly 
fifty-two thousand dollars each. 

And now on every hand, and especially from 
Almagro's contingent, the cry arose: "On to Cuz- 
co!" " But, " said Pizarro, " wait ! What about 
Atahualpa?" 

The Indian monarch had in substance, if not in 
letter, kept his word regarding his ransom and 
was now demanding freedom. Should freedom be 
given him? Early in his captivity the news that 
he was paying vast sums to Pizarro as a ransom 
had come to the ears of the legitimate Inca, who 
was in captivity near Cuzco; and Huascar, pro- 
ceeding to do what Atahualpa had surmised he 
might, had surreptitiously entered into relations 
with the Spaniards and offered a greater ransom for 
freedom than the ransom offered by Atahualpa. 
What a situation was here! And how completely 
to the Spanish advantage ! It admitted the playing 
off of one hostile element against another, and a 
Spaniard like Cortes would have triumphed by it. 
But Pizarro was not Cortes. What he did was to 
leave Huascar in Atahualpa's power, and at the 
same time incautiously let it be known to Ata- 
hualpa that Huascar was outbidding him. The 

13 



194 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

natural result followed : Huascar, by order of Ata- 
hualpa, was quietly put to death. 

Atahualpa at liberty must in any event be to the 
Spaniards no small menace; but, with Huascar out 
of the way, the menace was yet greater. What 
should be done with him.? The general voice was 
for killing him. Against this some protested — 
notably Hernando de Soto; and had Hernando 
Pizarro been then in Peru, his protest probably 
would have backed that of De Soto. But the 
general voice so far prevailed that in August the 
Inca was brought to trial. Some of the charges 
against him were unfair, as for example that he 
was an idolater and that he kept concubines; but 
two of them may have been genuinely conceived: 
one that he had injured the Spaniards by diverting 
part of his treasure; and the other, that he had 
done so by the murder of Huascar. A final charge 
there was, and its genuineness was manifest, to 
wit, that he was plotting an insurrection against 
Spanish rule. 

The result of the proceedings was that Ata- 
hualpa was found guilty and was condemned to 
death at the stake. But on his recanting his own 
faith and professing himself a Christian, his sen- 
tence was commuted. At night, on August 29, 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 195 

1533, in the plaza of Caxamarca, he was strangled 
with a bowstring. 

For the march to Cuzeo all at last was clear. A 
start was set for early in September, and when the 
day arrived loud did the Spanish bugles shout from 
their golden throats. No more uncertainty! No 
more delay ! Ho now for El Dorado ! Ho for regal 
Cuzco and the Temple of the Sun ! The way along 
the Quito- Cuzco road was precipitous, and owing 
to the cliffs and stairways, chasms and raging 
torrents — the latter spanned only by swaying 
bridges of osier — the Spanish force of nearly 
five hundred men had much ado to keep a foot- 
ing. Nor was this all. On the march the Con- 
queror was much harassed by Indian attacks, 
and, suspecting these to be instigated by one of 
Atahualpa's captains, Challcuchima by name, 
whom he had with him as a hostage, he ruth- 
lessly destroyed that worthy by burning him at 
the stake. 

Pizarro entered Cuzco two hours before sunset 
on November 15, 1533, a year to a day from the 
time when he had entered Caxamarca. How did 
this capital of the Incas look to him.? Situated a 
hundred and fifty miles northwest of Titicaca, it 



196 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

lay in a valley dominated by steep hills and distant 
mountains. On one of the hills reposed a huge 
Cyclopean fortress, Sacsahuaman, accentuated by 
towers square and round, a relic of that Megalithic 
or Great Stone Age which preceded the Inca period. 
But what presumably attracted Pizarro most were 
the structures of the town itself, the palaces and 
temples wherein lay the treasure. Grouped in the 
main about a plaza, with heavy inward-sloping 
stone walls pierced by doorways broader at bottom 
than top, they made a picture that was curiously 
Egyptian. These buildings were numerous, too, 
for not only was the town large — over a hundred 
thousand souls, perhaps — but when any great 
Cuzcan died, Inca or nobleman, his abode passed 
to no successor but was maintained in all respects 
as though he were yet alive. 

Far more than Mexico-Tenochtitlan was Cuzco 
a holy city. The supremacy there of one religious 
cult. Sun worship, fostered monotheism, and mono- 
theism demanded a supreme temple. Hence that 
shrine of the Sun, noblest edifice in America since 
the days of splendor in Yucatan, a sight of which 
the Spaniards had so ardently craved. There now 
it lay in a court of flowers, one end rounded into 
an apse, its outer wall embellished by a golden 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 197 

cornice three feet in depth. Pizarro must soon 
have visited the interior — that interior whence 
largely had come the seven hundred golden plates, 
and where now was to be seen the Sun himself in 
the guise of a resplendent golden disc flanked 
by mummies of Incas, his departed children, posed 
on golden thrones, sustained by golden pedestals. 

But in Cuzco religion did not exhaust itself with 
one temple, even though that temple was supreme. 
The whole city reflected religion — indeed was 
based upon it. So true was this, that the Center, 
the "Polaris" of the Empire, as distinguished from 
the '*Four Quarters," was the center of the plaza 
of Cuzco. Here, in the form of a golden vase, was 
a fountain; and about this, before dawn on the day 
of the summer solstice, Peruvians were wont to 
gather by tribes to worship. And to worship what.'^ 
Not an image of the Sun, but the Sun himself, 
if perchance he should appear. That he would 
appear was not taken for granted. He might not. 
Would he show his face on this great day .'^ Anxiety 
reigned, dread even. Then "over the mountains 
the silent herald Dawn, and — following — the 
Sun!" All very splendid, but not anything that 
Pizarro saw or would have rejoiced in had he seen 
it. To him, no less than to Father Valverde, the 



198 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

whole ceremony would have been utter infidelity, 
rank idolatry, a celebration to be straightway sup- 
pressed, as in fact it was. 

With regard to the treasure actually uncovered 
at Cuzco or on the way thither — slabs of silver 
twenty feet long by one foot broad, gold-en- 
wrapped mummies of Inca queens, and other 
precious objects — the quantity was vast, but not 
so vast, not by half, as the quantity already 
divided. Almagro's men, by waiting for their 
harvest until Cuzco was reached, did not fare as 
well as they would have fared at Caxamarca. 
Certain it is, though, that they fared too well 
to show signs of discontent. Discontent on their 
part, when it came, as come it inevitably did, was 
from a cause quite different. 

Three definite stages of the Peruvian conquest 
there were: that of preparation, that of active 
hostilities, and that of accomplishment. It is, 
however, a peculiarity of this conquest that the 
last stage, that of amassing treasure and of seiz- 
ing dominion, instead of following upon the state 
of active hostilities, largely preceded it and gave 
rise to it. Now, therefore, for a glance at the stage 
of active hostilities. Here Pizarro does not shine 
as he did in the preparatory stage of patience 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 199 

and endurance. A new man dominates the scene, 
Pizarro's brother, Hernando. 

Hernando Pizarro is ever a figure knightly and 
romantic. Unlike the rest of his family, he was 
neither illegitimate nor ignorant, though like them 
he was poor and had his way to make. That he 
could be chivalrous appears from his attitude 
toward Atahualpa, an attitude shared by an asso- 
ciate, Hernando de Soto. In these of our pages 
devoted to Mexico and Peru, three figures stand 
out as representatives of that chivalry illustrated 
in the Amadis of Gaul and satirized in Don Quixote: 
not so much Vasco Nunez de Balboa, Hernan 
Cortes, and Francisco Pizarro as, rather, Juan de 
Grijalva, Hernando de Soto, and Hernando Pi- 
zarro, men whom we instinctively associate with 
scenes of the tourney, with "splintered spear- 
shafts," and "shivered brands," but hardly less 
with "perfume and flowers that lightly rain from 
ladies' hands." 

Hernando Pizarro it was, to cite an incident 
romantic as well as practical, who, on the ex- 
pedition which he led to Pachacamac, gave the 
memorable order that the Spanish horses were to 
be shod with silver in lieu of iron. Hernando 
Pizarro, too, it was who, as Pizarro's emissary to 



200 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Spain, performed with courtliness the duty of lay- 
ing at the royal feet the incomparable riches of the 
Incas. A further duty in Spain he discharged, and 
one surely not lacking in chivalry: he assented to 
and even promoted the interests of Almagro, whom 
he did not like, by joining with the latter 's agent 
in procuring for him, along with the title of Maris- 
cal or Marshal, a grant of two hundred leagues 
beginning where Pizarro's grant left off. But j 
where did Pizarro's grant leave off? To this ques- 
tion the answer involves much: the story of Peru 
to the death of Almagro; then to the imprisonment 
of Hernando Pizarro for that death; and finally to 
the death of the Conqueror himself. 

Returning from Spain in the summer of 1535, 
Hernando Pizarro brought with him orders ex- 
tending the jurisdiction of Pizarro seventy leagues 
beyond the two hundred to the south of the River 
Santiago earher allotted him, and bestowing upon 
him the title of Marques de los Atavillos. But 
already at Cuzco it had come to Almagro's knowl- 
edge, and hence to Pizarro's, that the former had 
received a grant to the south of that of Pizarro. 
Therefore the question: Did two hundred and 
seventy leagues south from the River Santiago 
fall short of Cuzco, and so deliver that prize to 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 201 

Almagro; or beyond it, and so confirm it to Pi- 
zarro? Contending strenuously that Cuzco fell to 
him, Almagro nevertheless, soon after June, 1535, 
set out for Chile, a land possibly richer than Peru, 
one in any event undeniably his to exploit. De 
Soto, eager for adventure, would fain have gone 
with the Marshal but failed to gain consent. 
There did go, however, an auxiliary party of 
natives under the chief medicine-man of Cuzco, 
the Villac Umu. 

Such, as between the partners Pizarro and Al- 
magro, was the situation when Pizarro found him- 
self beset by another difficulty. The Indians of 
Peru were at last awake. In behalf of their land 
and their religion, of the ashes of their fathers and 
the temples of their gods, they had begun against 
the Spaniards a mighty revolt. 

By the time this revolt broke forth on April 18, 
1536, Pizarro had accomplished three considerable 
undertakings, or rather one such undertaking, for 
the other two had been accomplished for him 
rather than by him. Late in 1533, or early in 1534, 
Sebastian de Benalcazar had seized Quito. Then 
Pedro de Alvarado, our earlier acquaintance, 
blond and daredevil, having heard of Quito as 
a rich quarry, had disembarked against it at 



202 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Caraques, but had been headed off by Almagro 
backed by Benalcazar, and for a consideration 
called "his expenses," had agreed to leave the 
country. Lastly, on January 6, 1535, Pizarro had 
founded as the capital of Peru the city of Lima. 

But to seize the thread of our story. On the 
execution of Atahualpa, Pizarro found that while 
a captive Inca might be an embarrassment, no 
Inca at all would be a greater embarrassment still. 
He thereupon promptly filled the place of the 
dead Inca by naming as his successor one of 
Atahualpa's brothers, Toparca. On the way to 
Cuzco Toparca died, and a brother to the mur- 
dered Huascar — called Manco Inca — coming 
forth to greet Pizarro with professions of loyalty, 
was accepted as Inca and received the horla, 
Manco Inca, with studied Indian craft, disarmed 
Spanish caution and laid deep and secret plans. 

In 1536 Hernando Pizarro commanded in Cuzco, 
where were also his brothers, Juan and Gon- 
zalo; and, though by this time Manco Inca had in 
a measure betrayed his hand, Hernando in his 
chivalrous way treated him with confidence. On 
the 18th of April, Manco, in company with his 
chief medicine-man, who had left Almagro, quietly 
departed from Cuzco, on a pretext of visiting the 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 203 

burial-place of Huayna Ccapac, and once beyond 
Pizarro's reach summoned in council the caciques 
and war captains of Peru. "I am resolved," 
declared the Inca, "to rid this land of every Chris- 
tian, and shall first lay siege to Cuzco." Then, 
ordering to be brought two large golden vessels full 
of wine, "let such as are with me," he exclaimed, 
"pledge themselves herein to the death!" 

The fight for Cuzco centered around the huge 
fortress of Sacsahuaman. This, at first, the In- 
dians were able to seize and hold by setting on fire 
the combustible thatched roofs of the town and so 
forcing the Spaniards to huddle together in the 
plaza. But after a week of mingled struggle and 
endurance the fortress was scaled and captured. 
Its last defender was a Peruvian of giant size and 
prowess, one of the war chiefs who had pledged 
himself in the wine. This hero, seeing all was lost, 
"sprinkled dust upon his head toward heaven," 
then cast himself down upon the foe and so 
perished. 

While Hernando Pizarro was defending Cuzco, 
his brother the Conqueror was at Lima, his new 
capital. Here he was besieged; but the country 
being level, he was able to beat off the enemies by 
the aid of his horsemen. His great concern was 



£04 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Cuzco. Thither he dispatched what aid he could, 
but with ill success, for the party was intercepted 
and the severed heads of divers of them were 
thrown at Hernando's feet. But he did more. He 
appealed for aid to the entire world of Spanish 
America — to Panama, to Nicaragua, to Guate- 
mala, to New Spain, and to Espanola. That is to 
say, he appealed among others to Pedro de AI- 
varado and to Hernan Cortes; and by Cortes at 
least aid was sent. 

In the struggle for Cuzco, Indian warfare was 
exhibited to Europeans on a scale hitherto un- 
paralleled. Not alone were there warriors in count- 
less masses. Such had there been in Mexico. Not 
alone were there tossing crests, waving banners, 
and panoplies of featherwork. Such had there 
been in Mexico. Not alone were there forests of 
long lances and battle-axes edged with copper. 
Such things, or similar, had there been in Mexico. 
But there was displayed something besides — 
something which in Mexico had not been quite the 
same — to wit, real military intelligence. Though 
in general softer of fiber than the Aztec, both 
intellectually and physically, the Peruvian some- 
times outdid the Aztec in wit. To the Peruvian, 
for example, the "white stranger" was less a 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 205 

preternatural being than to the Aztec. The for- 
mer, too, feared the horse somewhat less. It is 
even said by Herrera that, so accustomed to the 
horse had the Peruvian become by the time of the 
struggle for Cuzco that he was occasionally to be 
seen on horseback himself, a statement which Sir 
Arthur Helps distinctly challenges. 

But the circumstances most significant for us 
in the Cuzco battles — battles hotly contested, for 
in one of them Juan Pizarro was killed — are the 
skill, the valor, the caution, the perseverance, and 
the knightly bearing of Hernando Pizarro. This 
capable leadership, especially in its knightly as- 
pect, appears to an even higher degree, however, 
in the contest next to arise, one in which the Peru- 
vian forces were divided between warring factions 
of the invading Spaniards. 

It was 1537, and Almagro was back from Chile. 
Weary, starved, frost-bitten, sun-blistered, dis- 
illusioned, and disgusted, he had returned. No 
more chasing of will-o'-the-wisps for him! Cuzco 
fell within his province! He knew it, so Cuzco 
he would have! Seeking but failing to make 
friends with Manco Inca, who lay with a strong 
force outside the city, Almagro overthrew him in 



206 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

fight, and, disregarding an armistice with Her- 
nando Pizarro for an adjustment of boundaries 
by "pilots," on the stormy night of the 8th of 
April he stole into Cuzco and, surprising Her- 
nando and Gonzalo Pizarro in their beds, prompt- 
ly seized them and imprisoned them in the Temple 
of the Sun. 

The feud long maturing between the partners 
Pizarro and Almagro was now squarely at issue. 
First, Almagro defeated Pizarro's lieutenant, Alon- 
so de Alvarado, and thereby made his tenancy of 
Cuzco secure. Next, Caspar de Espinosa, Luque's 
successor in the partnership, arriving from Pana- 
ma, sought to reconcile Almagro with Pizarro, but 
died in the midst of his efforts. Then Almagro, 
becoming aware of Pizarro's increasing force, con- 
sented to arbitration. Over this the partners met, 
embraced one another, and wept. There had in 
the past been many meetings of reconciliation be- 
tween Pizarro and Almagro, and at all of them 
tears had been freely shed. Once the partners 
had even had recourse to the Church, and had 
divided between them the Host. Nor were these 
meetings all mere fustian and hypocrisy. Not at 
any rate with Almagro. Old, ugly, scarred, and of 
inferior physique, he was at the same time capable 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 207 

of feeling and of manifesting the profoundest 
generosity. 

Despite tears and embraces, the arbitration had 
not succeeded; but a treaty was made whereby 
Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro were set at Hberty 
on stipulation that the question of Cuzco be left 
to the King and that Hernando Pizarro leave Peru 
within six weeks. Then suddenly there developed 
a further phase in the Pizarro- Almagro feud. 
Hardly had the treaty been concluded when a 
messenger from Spain brought word that each 
partner was to retain what he had already con- 
quered and peopled. Both hereupon claimed to 
have conquered Cuzco; and Pizarro, having the 
stronger following, declared the treaty annulled 
and prepared for battle. 

The principal commanders on the side of Pizarro, 
who had himself withdrawn to Lima on account of 
his years, were Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro, 
Alonso de Alvarado, and Pedro de Valdivia. On 
the side of Almagro, they were Almagro himself, 
too much incapacitated to fight but watching the 
field from afar in a litter; Pedro de Lerma, a 
deserter from Pizarro; and above all Rodrigo de 
Organez, a doughty, implacable soldier trained 
under the Constable of Bourbon. As for the forces. 



208 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

they were nearly equal: on Pizarro's side, some 
six hundred and fifty men; and on Almagro's, six 
hundred and eighty; whereof about two hundred 
and eighty and three hundred, respectively, were 
horsemen. 

Battle was joined on April 6, 1538, a short way 
out of Cuzco on the Plains of Salinas, and by the 
encounter that took place such cavaliers as Her- 
nando Pizarro, Rodrigo de Organez, and Pedro de 
Lerma must have been reminded of combats in 
the Old World. One circumstance, however, ren- 
dered it peculiarly a New World combat. Al- 
magro's men, divers of them, wore corslets, mori- 
ons, and arm-pieces hammered out of silver. By 
doubling the quantity of silver used, as compared 
with iron, they succeeded in producing, so they 
said, an armor as strong as that forged at Milan. 
In any event, it was as pretty a melee of knights, 
gentlemen, and foot-soldiers as one might wish to 
see; for not only were there skill and prowess, but, 
as occurs not seldom in partnership readjustments, 
a becoming amount of deadly animosity. 

But, more particularly, what of Hernando 
Pizarro .f^ "A veray parfit gentil knight" Her- 
nando was and, as such, careful of his appearance. 
Over his corslet he wore a surcoat of orange 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 209 

damask. Fastened to this was the Cross of the Or- 
der of Santiago given him by the King; and above 
his morion floated a tall white plume. These em- 
bellishments looked well, but there was more to 
them than that. Being a true Sir Knight, he had 
wrongs to avenge, and he wished his enemies to be 
able to distinguish him easily in the press and to 
have every opportunity to encounter him. At one 
point only was he at a disadvantage and a bit of 
a Don Quixote. He was not handsome. He was 
tall, which was well; but his lips hung heavy, and 
his nose was bulbous and red at the end. 

The challenge of the flame-colored surcoat and 
white plume did not pass unheeded. Pedro de 
Lerma spurred against Pizarro, with whom his 
relations were peculiarly strained^ and Pizarro 
spurred against Lerma. The lance of Lerma took 
effect chiefly upon Pizarro's horse, forcing him 
back on his haunches and unseating the rider, while 
Pizarro's lance pierced his adversary's thigh. In- 
deed this special bout was a kind of Ivanhoe and 
Brian de Bois-Guilbert affair, for neither combat- 
ant quite overcame the other; and the unhorsed 
knight, springing erect, drew his sword to try 
conclusions on foot. 

Organez meanwhile, grim and sinister, was 

14 



210 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

himself seeking Pizarro. His training had been in a 
harsh school which believed that "dead men do not 
bite, " and when Hernando was in Almagro's power, 
Orgaiiez had urgently advised cutting off his head. 
Like Richard of Gloucester at Bosworth Field, 
Organez at Salinas would seem to have been 
haunted by a presentiment that he was doomed to 
die. First, though, he would kill the usurper Pi- 
zarro. His rushes therefore were headlong and 
fierce. One cavalier whom, from a bright surcoat, 
he thought to be Hernando, he charged and ran 
through. Another he likewise pierced with his 
lance; and a third he cut down with his sword. 
Then, wounded in the head by a chain-shot, and 
his horse being down, he yielded to numbers. His 
sword he delivered up to one of Pizarro's squires, 
a cowardly fellow who stabbed his helpless prisoner 
to the heart. 

Throughout the battle, the hills about the Plains 
of Salinas were covered by onlooking Indians, 
auxiliaries of Almagro; but they merely looked on 
and wondered and took no part. The more the 
Spaniards slaughtered one another, the greater the 
gain to the natives. And, considering the numbers 
engaged, the slaughter was great. In less than two 
hours, more than one hundred and fifty knights 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 211 

and foot-soldiers were killed outright. Lerma 
received seventeen wounds and escaped, only to be 
murdered in his bed after the battle. Then came 
Almagro's turn — not that he was immediately 
made way with, but was put in prison and treated 
with consideration. In connection with his im- 
prisonment severe criticism has been visited upon 
Hernando Pizarro. In Cuzco there were many 
Almagrists, and, so long as their leader lived, peril 
to the stability of the Pizarro regime was imminent. 
Plots for the prisoner's liberation were rife. Under 
these circumstances Hernando Pizarro, disregard- 
ing tears, pleas for mercy, and reminders of how 
his own life had been spared by Almagro, permitted 
the latter to be condemned to death. Whether in 
so doing Hernando was actuated by a sense of 
duty or was simply displaying something of Span- 
ish primitivism, a quality so conspicuous in Pe- 
drarias, is a question. On July 8, 1538, Diego de 
Almagro was strangled in prison, and the next day 
the body was shown in the plaza with the head 
cut off. 

Almagro, dead, was now more his partner's 
"master " than he had been when alive. Hernando 
Pizarro sailed in 1539 for Spain to explain matters 



212 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

to the King. He was, however, anticipated by a 
friend of the dead partner, Diego de Alvarado, and 
was coldly received. Alvarado on his part chal- 
lenged Hernando to mortal combat but died before 
the ordeal of battle could be essayed. Yet Her- 
nando Pizarro did not escape punishment for the 
death of Almagro but was shut up in the fortress of 
Medina del Campo, where he was kept a prisoner 
for twenty years. 

On leaving Peru, Hernando Pizarro had cau- 
tioned his brother the Conqueror, to "beware the 
men of Chile," the Almagrists. They formed a 
distinct element both in Cuzco and in Lima, and 
at the latter place under the leadership of Juan de 
Rada, the one-time follower of Cortes, dreamed and 
conspired against the Conqueror's life. Finally, 
on June 26, 1541, their plottings bore fruit. On 
that day at noon, to the number of eighteen or 
twenty, they surprised Pizarro in the government 
house and slew him in cold blood. With the Con- 
queror at the time were several persons, notably 
his brother Martin of Alcantara, the least promi- 
nent of the family, but like all of them valiant and 
a good swordsman. The onset of the conspirators 
was furious. Pizarro was not able so much as to 
secure the door against them or to put on his 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 213 

corslet. Martin fought desperately but was soon 
cut down. Thereupon Pizarro, wrapping his left 
arm in his cloak, seized his sword and did bloody 
execution; but at length, receiving a thrust in the 
neck, he fell to the floor. *'Jesu!" exclaimed the 
fallen Conqueror, and, tracing on the floor a cross 
in his own blood, he bent to kiss it and so died. 

Of the four brothers of Pizarro, two were now 
dead and one was in permanent confinement in 
Spain. There was left in Peru Gonzalo Pizarro 
only. His career, like that of the Conqueror, was 
chequered. In 1540, in obedience to orders, he had 
made exploration from the Andes eastward. On 
this expedition one of his lieutenants, Francisco de 
Orellana, sailed down a stream traversing a coun- 
try where "the women fought by the side of their 
husbands," a country of Amazons, and at length 
passed into the Atlantic Ocean. In 1544 Gonzalo 
Pizarro made himself Governor of Peru. He as- 
pired, it is said, to become its absolute ruler and 
lord; and had he but heeded the counsel of his 
master of the camp, Francisco de Carvajal, he 
might have succeeded. As it was, in April, 1548, 
he was defeated in battle by forces of the Crown 
and was beheaded. The same year in which 



214 THE SPANISH CONQUERORS 

Gonzalo Pizarro had gone eastward from Quito, an- 
other explorer, Pedro de Valdivia, had gone south- 
ward into Chile; and here, on September 3, 1544, 
he founded the city of Valparaiso. In 1547 Valdi- 
via returned to Peru and was instrumental in 
bringing defeat on Gonzalo Pizarro. 

With regard to the Almagrist party, on the exe- 
cution of their leader, they set up his natural son 
Diego as Governor, but he was pronounced a rebel 
by the Crown, and in 1542, after the death of his 
able supporter, Juan de Rada, was overthrown in 
battle, captured, and put to death. In this con- 
flict our old acquaintance Pedro de Candia was 
Almagro's artillerist, but, falling under suspicion of 
treachery, was ridden down and killed by Almagro 
himself. 

From among the interesting figures in Peru 
under the Pizarro regime, there remains to be 
accounted for only the Inca Manco. Not long 
after his defeat by Almagro, he took refuge in a 
fastness of the Andes. The spot, it is thought, was 
the Megalithic town of Machu Picchu, whence the 
Incas had sprung. Here with his concubines, the 
Virgins of the Sun, he kept court, receiving and 
succoring outlawed Spaniards, beings no longer 
regarded by any Indian as preternatural. Here, 



PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 215 

too, about 1544, he died — struck down, it is said, 
at a game of bowls by a Spaniard with whom he 
had an altercation. 

After 1545, zeal for conquest in America on the 
part of Spain tended perceptibly to die down. As 
early as 1535, well within the lifetime of Cortes, 
who did not die till 1547, a Viceroy had been 
sent to Mexico. One was sent to Peru in 1543. 
With these appointments, government in Spanish- 
America gradually became more stable. Vast now, 
seemingly, was the interval since the day when, 
responding to the lure of Antillia, of Cipangu, and 
of the Cathay of Marco Polo, Columbus had set 
sail from Palos for 

The land where the sunsets go. 



I 



I 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

West and East 

Of the region of the West — the Atlantic Ocean or Sea 
of Darkness — John Fiske, The Discovery of America, 
2 vols. (1899), presents a fascinating account; and carto- 
graphical points are considered in great detail by Justin 
Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, 8 vols. 
(1884-1889), vols, i and ii, and Christopher Columbus 
(1891). The subject of Mythical Islands in the Atlan- 
tic, a subject of growing importance, is interestingly 
treated by Sir Clements R. Markham, Life of Christo- 
pher Columbus (1892), but its bearing on the discovery 
of America is best brought out in two magazine articles 
of recent date: one by William H. Babcock {Scottish 
Geographical Magazine, vols, xxxi and xxxii, 1915- 
1916), and the other by Thomas J. Westropp, Brazil and 
the Legendary Isles of North America {Proceedings of the 
Royal Irish Academy, 1912). 

The above-cited discussions are apart from the ques- 
tion of the Northmen in America, for, while the North- 
men no doubt discovered parts of North America at a 
very early date, these discoveries had no bearing on the 
discovery by Columbus. The pre-Columbian discover- 
ies (or discoveries by the Northmen) may be found well 

217 



218 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

set forth by Julius E. Olson, The Northmen, Columbus , 
and Cabot (Original Narratives of Early American HiS' 
lory, 1906), where authorities are given. 

As regards the East — Asia and India before Colum- 
bus — Sir Henry Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, 2 
vols. (3d ed. revised by Henri Cordier, 1903), and Yule, 
Cathay and the Way Thither, 4 vols, (revised by Cordier, 
Hakluyt Society Pubs., 1916), and R. H. Major, vol. 
XXII, India in the Fifteenth Century (Hakluyt Soc. Pubs.y 
1857) are fundamental. The same subject is more 
briefly treated by Cheyney, The European Background 
of American History (1904), and by John Fiske, The 
Discovery of America. Voyages to the East by the Por- 
tuguese are entertainingly described by R. H. Major, 
Life of 'prince Henry of Portugal (1868). 

Columbus 

Authoritative lives of Columbus in English are few. 
The best known is by Washington Irving, Life and 
Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 2 vols. (1828-1831). 
Based on original sources, this charming narrative, once 
authoritative, is now to a great degree superseded. The 
best life for the modern general reader is probably that 
by Sir Clements R. Markham, Life of Christopher 
Columbus (1892) . John Fiske, The Discovery of America, 
presents a highly sympathetic portrait of Columbus. 
Beginning with 1884 lives of Columbus have been less 
sympathetic in form and more critical. In that year 
Henry Harrisse published Christophe Colomb, 2 vols. 
This has not been translated, but in 1892 was followed 
by his Discovery of North America, in three parts, a work 
in English. Following this appeared in English a still 

I 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 219 

more critical estimate of Columbus by Henry Vignaud, 
Toscanelli and Columbus (1902). Then came Vignaud's 
Etudes critiques sur la vie de Colomb (1905) and Histoire 
critique de la grande entreprise de Christophe Colomh, 2 
vols. (1911). The views of Mr. Harrisse are strongly 
reflected by Justin Winsor, Christopher Columbus (1892). 
Influenced by the views of Mr. Harrisse and of Mr. 
Vignaud, Filson Young published in 1906 Christopher 
Columbus and the New World of his Discovery, 2 vols. 
(3d ed., 1912), a narrative written in popular style. To 
this is appended a valuable note by the Earl of Dunraven 
on the seamanship of Columbus's first voyage. 

But there have not been wanting writers to combat 
the iconoclasm of the critical lives of Columbus, as for 
example: John Boyd Thacher, Christopher Columbus, 
3 vols. (1903-1904) ; Henry P. Biggar, The New Colum- 
' bus (Report of the American Historical Association, 1912). 
Valuable critical estimates of the opinions of Vignaud 
and Thacher may be found expressed by Edward Gay- 
lord Bourne in the American Historical Review, vol. 
.VIII, 1903; vol. IX, 1904; vol. x, 1904; and in his Spain 
in America {The American Nation Series, 1904). Mr. 
iVignaud iiimself (American Historical Review, vol. 
XVIII, 1913) discusses claims made in certain quarters 
that Columbus was a Jew and in other quarters that he 
was a Spaniard. A vivid presentation of Columbus 
from an Italian source is contained in an article by 
Cesare de Lollis in the French Revue des Revues, Janu- 
ary 15, 1898. 

As bearing upon the early years of the life of Co- 
lumbus, there is a valuable essay by Ravenstein, 
Martin Behaim, his Life and his Globe (1908). This 
work is especially noteworthy for a beautiful and 



220 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

accurate reproduction in colors of the gores of Be- 
haim's globe, showing geographical conditions as con- 
ceived by Behaim in 1492, prior to Columbus's first 
voyage. 

Source materials for the life of Columbus are exten- 
sive, but are largely in foreign tongues. The Life of 
Columbus, by Ferdinand Columbus, his son, may be 
found in English in Churchill, Voyages (1744-1746) and 
in Pinkerton, Voyages (1808-1814). Thacher's Chris- 
topher Columbus contains excellent translations of much 
early material, such as the earliest sketches of the life of 
Columbus by contemporaries: Las Casas's account of 
the discovery of America and of Columbus's third 
voyage; and excerpts from the Epistles of Peter Martyr 
on the discovery. Peter Martyr's Decades, translated 
by Richard Eden, 1555, and Michael Lok — highly 
entertaining — is accessible in Hakluyt, Voyages (vol. 
V, edition of 1812), and in De Orbe Novo, well translated 
by Francis Augustus MacNutt, 2 vols. (1912). Colum- 
bus's own letters, several of the most important, are 
printed in English by R. H. Major, Select Letters of\ 
Columbus (2d ed., 1890). Columbus's journal of his 
first voyage was printed in English by Sir Clements R. 
Markham, Journal of Columbus (1893); but a new and 
more literal translation is furnished by Thacher in his 
life of Columbus. By far the best account in English 
of Columbus's four voyages is that in the collection of 
documents edited by E. G. Bourne and printed in The 
Northmen, Columbus, and Cabot {Original Narratives of 
Early American History, 1906). In 1894 the Ameri- 
can Historical Association printed in translation a* 
number of the private letters of Columbus in its Annual 
Report. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 221 

Balboa and the Pacific 

For the voyages secondary to those of Columbus, the 
best authorities are the following : Irving, Voyages of the 
Companions of Columbus (1831), printed with Irving's 
Life of Columbus; Sir Arthur Helps, The Spanish Con- 
quest in America (4 vols., 1855-1861, new edition with 
notes by M. Oppenheim, 4 vols., 1904), and H. H. 
Bancroft, History of Central America, 2 vols. (1882- 
1887). The voyages of Ojeda and Nicuesa, involving 
Balboa, are covered by the authorities just cited. Peter 
Martyr's Decades contains an admirable sketch of Bal- 
boa and his discovery of the Pacific Ocean. The latest 
and most authoritative account (especially as to chro- 
nology) is, however, in Spanish by the Chilean scholar, 
J. T. Medina, El Descubrimiento del Oceano Pacijico. 

Naming of America 

Vespucci and the naming of America has given rise to 
much discussion. John Fiske, following the Brazilian 
scholar Varnhagen, treats the subject controversially 
in The Discovery of America. His views are critically 
reviewed by E. G. Bourne in his Spain in America, 
The latest treatment (one favorable to Vespucci) is by 
Vignaud, Americ Vespuce {llf61-1512) (1917), a work 
in French. It is Mr. Vignaud 's thesis that not only did 
Vespucci anticipate Columbus in the discovery of the 
mainland of America, but that he, first of all explor- 
ers and writers, realized that Mundus Novus (South 
America) was wholly distinct from Asia, a new con- 
tinent and a new world. The letters of Vespucci have 
I been printed in English by C. R. Markham, Letters of 



222 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Amerigo Vespucci {Hakluyt Soc. Pubs., 1894). A more 
accurate translation of the earliest letter (the Soderini) 
was printed by Quaritch, The First Four Voyages of 
Amerigo Vespucci (1893); but by far the best transla- 
tion is by George Tyler Northup, Vespuxici Reprints, 
Texts and Studies, vol. rv, 1916. 

Magellan 



j 



The epoch-making voyage of Magellan may be 
studied in the contemporary account of Antonio Piga- 
fetta, Magellan's Voyage Round the World, translated 
by James A. Robertson, 2 vols, and index volume (1906). 
Brief accounts are given by John Fiske, The Discovery of 
America, and by E. G. Bourne, Spain in America. On 
the diplomatic negotiations between Spain and Portu- 
gal regarding fields for discovery, see Thacher, Colum- 
bus, vol. II, and Bourne, in his Historical Introduction 
to The Philippine Islands (edited by Blair and Robert- 
son), vol. I (1903). 



Mexico 



* 



Basic accounts in English for the conquest of Mexico 
are: The Letters of Cortes (complete) translated and 
edited by F. A. MacNutt, 2 vols. (1908); Bernal Diaz, 
The True History of the Conquest of Mexico, translated 
by A. P. Maudslay, 5 vols. {Hakluyt Soc. Pubs., 1908- 
1916) ; and The Narrative of the Anonymous Conqueror, 
translated by Marshall H. Saville (Cortes Society, 1917). 
Besides the foregoing, there exist histories of the con- 
quest such as W. H. Prescott, The Conquest of Mexico, 
S vols. (1843), a delightful narrative but in parts highly 
uncritical; and Sir Arthur Helps, The Spanish Conquest 
in America, a narrative quite as readable as Prescott's 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 223 

and less uncritical. A good history is by H. H. Ban- 
croft, History of Mexico, 5 vols. (1883-1887). The 
latest biography of Cortes in English is by F. A. Mac- 
Nutt, Fernando CorUs and the Conquest of Mexico 
{Heroes of the Nations Series), 1909. 

Mexican archeology — including the subject of Aztec 
civilization — is dealt with in a multitude of publica- 
tions. Into this great field John Fiske, The Discovery 
of America, may be accepted as the best popular guide. 
But see also Lewis Spence, The Civilization of Ancient 
Mexico (1912). Works more special in character are: 
Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society (1877), and Houses 
and House Life of the American Aborigines (1881) ; A. F. 
Bandelier, Art of War of the Ancient Mexicans (1877), 
Tenure of Lands of the Ancient Mexicans (1878), The 
Social Organization of the Ancient Mexicans (1879), An 
ArchcBological Tour in Mexico (1884). A serviceable 
compendium is T. A. Joyce, Mexican Archceology, 1914. 

Central America 

The history of Central America is based largely on 
two sources: Pascual de Andagoya, Narrative of the 
Proceedings of Pedrarias Ddvila, translated and edited 
by Sir Clements R. Markham {Hakluyt Soc. Pubs., 
1865) ; and The Letters of Cortes, translated and edited 
by F. A. MacNutt, 2 vols. (1908). To these accounts 
may be added Bernal Diaz, True History of the Conquest 
of Mexico, translated by Maudslay, 5 vols. {Hakluyt 
Soc. Pubs., 1908-1916), which contains an account of 
the Yucatan expedition of Cortes. A recent useful book 
on Yucatan is Philip Ainsworth Means, History of the 
Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas, Peabody 
Museum Papers, vol. vii (1917). 



224 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Peru 

Peru on the historical side has not been neglected by 
investigators. The conquest is described by Pizarro's 
two secretaries and by Hernando Pizarro: Reports on 
the Discovery of Peru, translated and edited by Sir 
Clements R. Markham {Hakluyt Soc. Pubs,, 1872). 
The report by Secretary Pedro Sancho has lately been 
retranslated by Philip Ainsworth Means and published 
by the Cortes Society, 1917. A readable account is by 
Sir C. R. Markham (Winsor, Narrative and Critical 
History of America, vol. ii). The story of the Incas 
themselves is told by Markham, The Incas of Peru 
(1910). John Fiske contrasts the Peruvian and Aztec 
civilizations in The Discovery of America; and Peruvian 
chronology is studied by P. A. Means, Culture Sequence 
in the Andean Area {Proceedings of the Nineteenth Con- 
gress of Americanists, 1917). This article is followed, 
in the same publication, by an excellent general survey 
of Inca Culture by Hiram Bingham of Yale University. 
W. H. Prescott, A History of the Conquest of Peru, 2 vols. 
(1847), is still a good work; and Sir Arthur Helps, The 
Spanish Conquest in America, is excellent in its account 
of Peru. It departs from Prescott in the view presented 
of Hernando Pizarro. 

General 

For additional titles, see the bibliographical references 
appended to the articles on Central America, Mexico, 
Peru, and South America, as well as those on Balboa, 
Cortes, Columbus, and Magellan, in The Encyclopcedia 
Britannica, 11th Edition. 



INDEX 



Acachinanco, Montezuma meets 
Cortes at, 129 

Ada, 87, 88, 142; founded, 84 

Aconcagua, Andean peak, 161 

Africa, Behaim journeys to, 22; 
Columbus's voyage to, 22, 
36; on Behaim's globe, 12, 23 

Agriculture, Peruvian, 164-65 

Aguilar, Geronimo de, 92, 104, 
106, 136 

Ailly, Pierre d'. Imago Mundi, 
23, 35 (note), 36 

Alaminos, pilot of Grijalva ex- 
pedition, 96 

Alcantara, Martin of, 168, 212- 
213 

Alfonso V of Portugal, 21 

Alfraganus the Arabian, 23, 
36 

Alhambra, 34 

Almagro, Diego de, 166; part- 
ner of Pizarro, 155, 191; sails 
from Panama, 155-5Q; returns 
to Panama, 156, 157, 158; 
made Captain of Tumbez, 
168; joins Pizarro in Peru, 191 
et seq.\ at Cuzco, 198; made 
Marshal, 200; grant of land 
to, 200-01; contests Pizarro's 
grant, 200-01, 205-11; goes to 
Chile, 201; defeats Alvarado, 
202; returns from Chile, 205; 
forces of, 207-08; imprison- 
ment and death, 211; avenged, 
211-12 

Almagro, Diego de, son of Diego, 
214 

Alvarado, Alonso de, 206, 207 

IS 225 



Alvarado, Diego de, 212 

Alvarado, Pedro de, on Grijalva 
expedition, 96, 98; with Cor- 
tes, 103, 133, 135, 136; sent to 
Guatemala, 147-48; personal 
characteristics, 147; plans to 
complete work of Balboa, 148- 
149; against Quito, 201-02; 
Pizarro appeals to, 204 

Amadis of Gaul, 1, 199 

Amazon River, 160 

America, voyages of Columbus 
to, 39-58; naming of, 66; 
bibliography of name, 221- 
222; Tierra Firme, 69; Ma- 
gellan's discoveries, 78; see 
also Central America, South 
America 

Anan, province of Cuba, 54 

Andagoya, Pascual de, 143 

Andes, The, 160, 161, 173, 174, 
191, 192 

Antarctic Current, 160 

Antigua, 145; see also Santa 
Maria la Antigua 

Antilles, The, 63, 68, 93-94; see 
also Cuba, Espanola, West 
Indies 

Antillia, Island of, 3, 12, 20, 24, 
25 (note), 43, 49, 63, 215 

Arabia, Rabbi Benjamin visits, 8 

Arbolancha, Pedro de, reports 
Balboa's discovery, 79, 83 

Archeology, 146-47, 162, 196 

Arco, Domimguez do, 21 

Arguello, Fernando de, 88, 89 

Arias de Avila, Pedro, see Pe- 
drarias 



226 



INDEX 



Aristotle, quoted, 11-12; author- 
ity of Behaim, 23 

Ascasmayu River, 160 

Asia, early missionaries to, 5; 
aim of Columbus to reach, 
22, 24, 25 (note), 35 (note), 
41, 46, 55, 57-58, 78 (note); 
Behaim's westward journey to 
find, 24; Cuba identified as, 
47, 53, 56; America thought 
subsidiary to, 78; see also 
Cathay, Cipangu 

Atahualpa, brother of Huascar, 
Inca of Peru, 170, 171, 185, 
193-94; ruler of Quito, 171; 
and Pizarro, 171, 174, 175 et 
seq.; appearance, 175; and 
Christianity, 181-82, 194; 
capture of, 183; ransom, 185- 
190; trial, 194; execution, 195, 
202 

Atlantic Ocean, 2, 6; mythical 
islands of, 3-4, 6, 20, 24; 
bibliography, 217; see also 
Mare Tenebrosum 

Atrato River, see Darien River 

Avila, Pedro Arias de, see Pe- 
drarias 

Azores, The, 2, 20, 23, 49 

Aztecs, send embassies to Cortes, 
107-09, 110, 113, 127-28; 
religion, 120, 124, 127; art, 
121-22; poetry, 122-23; strug- 
gle for subsistence, 123-24: 
organization, 124; resist Cor- 
tes, 137; Cortes takes chiefs 
to Honduras, 150; in retinue 
of Cortes, 152; extent of 
authority, 163; compared to 
Quichuas, 163, 166; see also 
Cortes, Indians, Mexico-Ten- 
ochtitlan, Montezuma, Na- 
huas, Totonac Indians 

Bagdad, Rabbi Benjamin visits, 8 

Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, 99, 

139, 141-42, 154, 169, 187, 

199; accompanies Ojeda, 65, 

66, 67; early life, 66; personal 



characteristics, 67; prepares 
for conquest, 69; use of dogs, 
69-70, 75, 104-05; seeks gold 
and food, 70-72; alliance with 
Careta and Comogre, 70-71; 
ordered home by King, 72; 
letters to Ferdinand, 73-74, 
82-83; crosses Isthmus of 
Darien, 74-76; discovers Pa- 
cific, 76; returns to West Indies, 
78; sends word of discovery to 
Ferdinand, 79; displaced by 
Pedrarias, 79, 81; and Pedra- 
rias, 81, 82-83, 84-86, 87-90, 
139, 140; royal favors, 83-84, 
85; builds ships, 86; astrolo- 
ger predicts evil to, 86; crisis 
in affairs of, 87-89; trial and 
execution, 89; compared with 
Cortes, 109; bibliography, 221 

Balsas River (Sabana?), 86 

Banderas, Rio de, 96 

Barcelona, Columbus received 
by Ferdinand and Isabella in, 
50-51 

Bastidas, Rodrigo de, 66, 67 

Batuta, Ibn, 9, 16; quoted, 9, 
10 

Bayona, Pinta arrives at, 50 

Baza, siege of, 28 

"Beccaria" of 1435, 4, 20 

Behaim, Martin, 26, 35 (note), 
62, 63, 147; globe of 1492, 12, 
23-24, 43; life, 22-23; question 
of Columbus's indebtedness to, 
24-25; Ravenstein's essay on, 
219-20 

Belianis, Don, 2 

Benalcazar, Sebastian de, 178, 
201, 202 

"Bemncasus"of 1463, 1476, and 
1482, 4 

Benjamin, Rabbi, 8, 9 (note), 10, 
16 

Bernal Harbor, 111, 114 

Biru, 143, 154; see also Peru 

Bobadilla, Francisco de, 57 

Bobadilla, Isabel de, wife of 
Pedrarias, 80-81, 85, 145 



INDEX 



227 



Botello, Luis, 87, 88, 89 

Braga, Archbishop of, Peter 

Martyr writes to, 52 
Brazil, 63 
Brazil, island of, 3, 63 

Cabot, Sebastian, 62 

Cabral, Pedralvarez, 63 

Cabrero, Juan, pleads for Co- 
lumbus, 34 

Cadiz, second expedition of 
Columbus sails from, 80 

Caledonia Bay, 74 

Caledonia Harbor, 84 

Calzada de Iztapalapan, 130 

Campeche, Cordoba at, 95, 97, 
104 

Canaries, The, 2, 20 

Candia, Pedro de, 159, 166, 167, 
168, 178, 214 

Cape Verde Islands, 2, 20, 
23 

Careta, cacique of Cueva, 70, 85 

Cariari (Nicaragua), 58, 92; 
see also Nicaragua 

Cartagena, 66-67 

Carvajal, Francisco de, 213 

Castile, Columbus sails for, 49 

Castilla del Oro, 65, 68, 101 

Castillo, Bernal Diaz del, see 
Diaz, Bernal 

"Catalan" of 1375, 4 

Cathay, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 23, 24, 
46, 47, 49, 58, 99, 187, 215 

Catoche, Point, 95, 96 

Causeways at Mexico-Tenoch- 
titlan, 117 

Caxamarca, Atahualpa conquers, 
170; Pizarro at, 172, 174-95; 
description of, 177-78; Ata- 
hualpa in, 178-95 

Cempoalla, settlement of Toto- 
nac Indians, 110; Cortes at, 
111-14, 133; description of, 
111-12; people's idea of Span- 
iards, 128 

Central America, 58, 69; bibli- 
ography, 223, 224; see also 
America, Darien, Guatemala, 



Honduras, Panama, Tierra 
Firme, Yucatan 

Cervantes, Miguel de, 2 

Chalco, Lake, 116, 117, 125 

Challcuchima, one of Atahual- 
pa's captains, 195 

Champoton, Cordoba lands at, 
95 

Chapultepec, 117 

Charles V of Spain, 110, 152, 
168 

Charles VIII of France, 29 

Charts and maps, early marine 
charts, 4, 20; Behaim's globe 
of 1492, 12, 23-24, 43; Bar- 
tholomew Columbus limns ma- 
rine, 18, 28; of Bartholomew 
Perestrello, 18-19; Toscanelli's 
chart, 25 (note); Columbus 
limnr marine, 28; Pinzon en- 
trusts map from Rome to 
Columbus, 31, 42; Columbus 
compiles chart, 31-32; Co- 
lumbus sees world maps, 47; 
Fra Mauro's map of 1457-59, 
47 

Chicama, 156 

Chile, Inca dominion in, 170; 
Almagro's trip to, 201, 205; 
Almagrists of, 212 

Chimborazo, volcanic peak, 167 

China, 5, 8; see also Cathay 

Chios, Island of, Columbus goes 
to, 16, 36 

Chiriqui Indians, 143 

Cholula, 125, 128 

Cipango, see Cipangu 

Cipangu (Japan), 6, 12, 22, 24, 
42, 46, 47, 49, 58, 99, 187, 
215 

Columbus, Bartholomew, broth- 
er of Christopher, 15; in Lisbon, 
18; enlists aid of England and 
France for Christopher, 29; 
arrested by Bobadilla, 57; on 
fourth voyage of Columbus, 
57; use of dogs by, 69-70 

Columbus, Bianchinetta, sister of 
Christopher, 15 



228 



INDEX 



Columbus, Christopher, 99, 115, 
139, 147, 215; personal char- 
acteristics, 13-14, 60-61; fam- 
ily of, 15; born at Genoa, 15; 
education, 15; writes Bank of 
St. George, 15, 57; early life, 
16; early voyages, 16-18, 19- 
20, 36; marriage, 18; tradi- 
tions as to interest in West, 18- 
19; Journal, 21, 36, 37, 41, 44, 
46-47, 54-55, 56; audiences 
with King of Portugal, 21-22, 
49-50; aim of, 22, 24, 25 
(note), 35 (note), 41, 45-46, 
55, 57-58, 78 (note); indebted- 
ness to Behaim, 24-25; at 
Palos, 25-26, 29-32, 50; life in 
Spain, 25 et seq., 58-59; inter- 
ests Duke of Medina Coeli, 26; 
audiences with Ferdinand and 
Isabella, 26, 32-33, 51; Tala- 
vera's council, 27, 32-33; 
relations with Beatrix Enri- 
quez, 28, 34, 39, 59; interviews 
pilots, 30-31; and Pinzon, 
30-32, 35 (note), 37-38, 42- 
43, 48; second council dis- 
cusses plan of, 32-33; demands 
of, 33; causes for derision of, 
33; demands granted, 34; Ca- 
pitulation and Letters Patent 
issued to, 35 (note); nautical 
skill, 36; recruits secured, 38, 
42; ships, 38; personnel of 
expedition, 39; sets sail, 39-40; 
first voyage, 40-41, 42-44; 
landing, 44-45; discovers Cuba 
and Hayti, 45; search for 
mainland, 47; identifies islands 
as Asia, 47, 53, 56; builds 
fortress, 48; sails for Spain, 
48; homeward voyage, 49; 
places parchment in barrel, 49; 
receives letter from sovereigns, 
50; trophies, 51, 55; letters of, 
53, 56-57, 61-62; superstitions 
and tales of, 54-55; second 
voyage, 55; discovers Porto 
Rico and Jamaica, 55; founds 



Isabella, 56; third voyage, 56- 
57, 90, 99; discovers mainland 
of America, 5Q; arrested and 
sent to Spain, 57; fourth voy- 
age, 57-58; makes will, 57, 58- 
59; death (1506), 59; estimate 
of, 59-62; idea of America, 78; 
contact with Maya civili- 
zation, 92-93; and Cuba, 94; 
bibliography, 218-20 

Columbus, Diego, son of Christo- 
pher, 59; born (1480 or 1481), 
18; at Palos, 25, 29; brought 
to Cordova, 34, 39; Governor 
of Antilles, 68, 94, 101, 102; 
Balboa solicits aid from, 69, 
71, 72, 91 

Columbus, Diego, brother of 
Christopher, 15, 55, 51 

Columbus, Felipa, wife of Christo- 
pher, 18, 25, 28 

Columbus, Ferdinand, son of 
Christopher, 34, 39; quoted, 
17, 60; born (1488), 28; account 
of voyage of Columbus, 43; 
shares fourth voyage of Co- 
lumbus, 57 

Columbus, Giovanni, brother of 
Christopher, 15 

Columbus, William, of Case- 
neuve, see William of Case- 
neuve 

Comogre, cacique in Darien, 70; 
71 

Constantinople, Rabbi Benjamin 
visits, 8 

Conti, Nicolo de, 9 (note) 

Copan, ruins of, 146 

Cordoba, Francisco Hernandez 
de, in Cuba, 94; expedition of, 
95, 97, 99, 104; sent to Nica- 
ragua, 143; treachery and 
death, 144 

Cordoba, Gonsalvo de, 80, 100 

Cordova, Columbus at, 26-29; 
sends son Diego to, 34, 39 

Cortes, Hernan, 65, 78, 80, 99, 
187, 199; finds Guerrero and 
Aguilar, 92, 104; in Cuba, 94, 



INDEX 



229 



Cortes, Hernan — Continued 
101; born (1485), 100; early 
life, 100; personal traits, 100, 
101; marries, 101; alcalde at 
Santiago de Cuba, 101; appear- 
ance, 101 ; leader of expedition, 
101-02; preparations, 102; dis- 
trusted by Governor, 102, 103; 
sails from Santiago, 103; com- 
panions and outfit, 103; "New 
Spain," 104; at Tabasco, 104- 
106, 150; at San Juan de Uliia, 
106-10, 167; embassies sent bv 
Aztecs to, 107-09, 110, 113, 
127-28; and Montezuma, 106, 
108, 109, 113, 115, 126, 129-32, 
134, 171, 172, 177, 183; opposes 
Velasquez, 109, 133, 149; sinks 
his ships, 110, 114: plans new 
basis for expedition, 110; 
and Totonac Indians, 110-14; 
in Cempoalla, 111-14, 133; 
missionary zeal, 114, 133; 
at Mexico- Tenochtitlan, 125, 
129-37; trouble with Aztecs, 
132-37; Xarvaez against, 133; 
losses of, 135; final victory, 137- 

■ 138; south of Mexico, 145, 146, 
147, 148, 149-51, 154; treach- 
ery of Olid, 149; returns to 
Mexico, 151-52; to Spain 
(1528), 152; marriage, 153 
receives royal favors, 153 
sends aid to Pizarro, 204 
death (1547), 215 

Costa Rica, 84 

Cotopaxi, volcanic peak, 167 

Covohuacan, Aztec settlement, 
129, 133 

Cozumel (Island of Swallows), 
96, 103 

Cuba, 54; discovered, 45; Co- 
lumbus identifies as Asia, 47, 
53, 56; Balboa obtains sup- 
plies from, 85; Velasquez Gov- 
ernor of, 94; Cordoba and 
Grijalva expeditions from, 95- 
98; Cortes expedition from, 
98-99, 103 



Cueva, district of Darien, 70; 
Balboa made Captain-General 
of, 84 

Cuitlahuatzin, Aztec chief, 125, 
134, 137, 138 

Cuitlalpitoc, cacique, servant of 
Montezuma, 107 

Culiia, see Uliia 

Cuzco, Inca in Peru, 170; see 
also Huascar, HuajTia Cca- 
pac 

Cuzco, capital of the Incas, 162, 
165; Alvarado hears of, 148; 
Ruiz learns of, 157; road 
connects Quito and, 173; 
treasure from, 188, 198; Pi- 
zarro goes to, 190-91, 192, 193, 
195-98; description of, 195- 
196; shrine of the Sun at, 196- 
197; Almagro claims, 201, 205- 
211; Hernando Pizarro com- 
mands at, 202-03; siege of, 
203-05; Almagrists in, 211, 
212 

Cynocephalae, mythical crea- 
tures of the East, 6 

Dabaiba, cacique in Darien, 

72 
Damascus, Rabbi Benjamin 

\'isits, 8 
Darien, Balboa in, 67, 70 et seq., 
104; cities, 67, 142-43; Nicuesa 
brought to, 68: Pedrarias 
made Governor of, 79; famine 
in, 94; see also Panama 
Darien, Isthmus of, see Darien 
Darien (Atrato) River, 65 
Da\'ila, Gil Gonzalez, see Gon- 
zalez Davila, Gil 
Da\*ila, Pedrarias, see Pedrarias 
De la Cosa, Juan, 39, 64, 67 
De Soto, Hernando, see Soto» 

Hernando de 
Di'as, Bartholomeu, Portuguese 

captain, 29 
Diaz, Bernal. 80, 95; quoted* 

105, 111, 112-13, 120, 126 
Diego, Juan, of Deza, 34 



230 



INDEX 



Diriangen, cacique in Nicaragua, 
141 

Dogs, Balboa's use of, 69-70, 
75, 104-05; Bartholomew Co- 
lumbus uses, 69-70; Pedrarias 
uses, 145 

Dulce, Golfo, 151 

Dulmo, Fernam, of Terceira, 24, 
62-63 

Dunraven, Lord, quoted, 44 

East, The, tales of, 4-11; mythi- 
cal creatures of, 6-8; wealth of, 
9-11; bibliography, 218; see 
also Cathay, Cipangu, India 

Enciso, Martin Fernandez de, 
66, 67, 69, 72, 81, 109 

England, Columbus in, 17, 36; 
Bartholomew Columbus in, 29 

Enriquez, Beatrix, 28, 34, 39, 
59 

Espaflola (Hayti), 66; Columbus 
discovers, 19, 21, 45; on Be- 
haim's globe, 24; supposed to 
be Japan, 47, 58; La Navidad 
on, 48, 55-56; Isabella founded 
on, 56; chaotic condition in, 57; 
letter of Columbus from, 64; 
Nicuesa from, 65; Diego Co- 
lumbus at, 68, 94 ; Balboa seeks 
aid from, 69, 71, 72, 74, 91; 
Bartholomew Columbus in, 69- 
70; Ovando Governor of, 100; 
Pizarro asks aid from, 204 

Espinosa, Caspar de, 84, 89, 
142, 143, 206 

Esplandidn, The Exploits of, 2 

Estreito, ' Joao Affonso, of Ma- 
deira, 24, 26, 62-63 

Estremadura (Spain), Balboa 
born in, 66; Cortes from, 100; 
Pizarro from, 154 

Fair God, see QuetzalcoatI 

Fayal, an Atlantic island, 22- 
23 

Fellipillo, interpreter with Pi- 
zarro, 181 

Ferdinand, King of Spain, and 



Balboa, 73-74, 79, 83, 85; 
see also Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella 

Ferdinand and Isabella, King 
and Queen of Spain, audiences 
to Columbus, 26, 32-33, 51; 
grant Capitulation and Let- 
ters Patent to Columbus, 35 
(note); letter to Columbus, 50; 
Columbus's letter to, 56-57; 
see also Ferdinand, Isabella 

Fernandina, Isla (Cuba), 98; 
see also Cuba 

Fiske, John, estimate of Pe- 
drarias, 81; quoted, 116 

Florida, 95 j 

Fonseca, Bay of, 141 i 

France, Bartholomew Columbus 
in, 29 

Francis I of France, 190 

Francisquillo, dwarf of Diego 
Columbus, 102-03 

Frontera, Pedro Vasquez de la, 
see La Frontera 

Gallo, Island of, discovered, 157; 
Pizarro on, 158, 159, 168, 
169 

Garabito, Andres, 87-88, 89- 
90 

Genoa, Rabbi Benjamin visits, 
8; controls Mediterranean and 
Black Seas, 9 (note); Colum- 
bus from, 15, 16 

Gold, as lure of East, 10; search 
of Columbus for, 46, 99; Bal- 
boa's object, 70, 71; sent to 
Cortes by Montezuma, 108- 
109, 127-28; Atahualpa's ran- 
som, 185-90; at Cuzco, 198 

Golden Chersonese of Ptolemy 
(Malay Peninsula), 59, 68, 
77, 78, 187 

Gomera, one of Canary Islands, 
40 

Gonzalez Davila, Gil, 139-40, 
141, 143-44, 146, 149, 184 

Gonzalez, Ruy, of Clavijo, 9 
(note) 



INDEX 



231 



Good Hope, Cape of, discovered, 

29 
Gorgona, Island of, 168; Pizarro 

on, 159, 166, 169 
Gracias 4 Dios, Cape, 65, 79 
Granada, 32, 34 
Granada, Archbishop of, letter of 

Peter Martyr to, 53 
Greytown, 145 
Grijalva, Juan de, 199; goes to 

Cuba, 94, 98; expedition, 96- 

97, 98-99, 126 
Grijalva, Rio de, 96, 104 
Guanahani (Watling) Island, 

43, 44 
Guana j a, island of, 92, 149 
Guatemala, Cortes and, 146-47; 

Maya culture in, 146; Pizarro 

asks aid of, 204 
Guayaquil, Gulf of, 167 
Guerrero, Gonzalo, 92, 104 
Guinea, Columbus journeys to, 

36 

Habana, founded, 94; Olid at, 

149 
Hayti, see Espanola 
Hand of Satan, Savage Island 

called, 3 
Helps, Sir Arthur, estimate of 

Pedrarias, 81; cited, 155, 205 
Henry VII of England, 29 
Herrera, Spanish historian, 

quoted, 77; cited, 205 
Heythum I, King of Lesser 

Armenia, 9 
Honduras, Andres Nino in, 141; 

Nicuesa in, 65; Cortes and, 

145, 146, 148, 149-50, 154 
Horses, Cortes's use of, 103, 105, 

125, 135; effect on Indians, 

105, 113-14, 128, 135, 150-51, 

175-76, 205; shod with silver 

in Peru, 199 
Huascar, Inca of Peru, 171, 185, 

193-194; see also Cuzco 
Huayna Ccapac, Inca of Peru, 

170-71, 203 
Huitzilipan, Valley of, 125 



Huitzilopochtli, Nahua god of 
war, 120, 124, 127 

Humboldt Current, see Ant- 
arctic Current 

Hunger Harbor, see Puerto de la 
Hambre 

Iceland, Columbus in, 17 

Imago Mundi, by Pierre d'Ailly, 
23, 35 (note), 36 

Incas, origin of, 162; government, 
163. 164-65, 170-71; see also 
Atahualpa, Cuzco, Huascar, 
Montezuma, Peru, Pizarro 

India, early travelers in, 5, 6, 8, 
9; on Behaim's globe, 12, 23; 
identified with New World 
discoveries, 58, 187 

Indians, Columbus and, 45, 46, 
51, 55; of Darien, 67; Balboa 
and, 70-71, 74, 75, 86; rela- 
tions with Spaniards, 81-82, 
83, 95, 101, 104, 145; human 
sacrifices, 97-98; resist Cortes, 
104, 105; describe Grijalva's 
expedition, 126; Ruiz meets, 
157; attack Pizarro, 195, 201- 
205; watch battle at Salinas, 
210; see also Aztecs, Chiriqui 
Indians, Incas, Mayas, Nahuas, 
Totonac Indians 

Innocent VIII, Pope, Pinzon 
uses library of, 31 

Irving, Washington, quoted, 80 

Isabella, Queen of Spain, tenders 
jewels for Columbus, 35; death 
(1504), 58; see also Ferdinand 
and Isabella 

Isabella, settlement in Hayti, 5Q 

Itzamna, Maya god of the East, 
93 

Itztapalapan, community of 
Mexico, 125, 129, 133, 134, 
137 

Iztapan, 150 

Jamaica, discovered, 55; Colum- 
bus writes from, 62; Valdivia 
wrecked off, 91 



•e32 



INDEX 



Januarius, Hannibal, account of 
Columbus's voyage, 51-52, 53- 
54 

Japan, 25 (note), 43; see also 
Cipangu 

Jeronimite Fathers, 101 

John, Prester, 4, 8 

John of Marignolli, P'riar, 5; 
quoted, 7-8 

John of Monte Corvino, Friar, 5 

John of Pian de Carpine, Friar, 
5 

John II of Portugal, 21, 28, 49, 
56; quoted, 49-50 

Juana, see Cuba 

Julian, slave captured by Cor- 
doba expedition, 95, 104 

Karakorum, 5, 9 

King Island, see Reyella 

Kinsay, 5, 47 

Kish, an island in the Persian 

Gulf, 8, 10 
Kukulcan, Maya sun god, 93, 

120 

Labrador, 30 

La Cosa, Juan de, 39, 64, 67 

La Frontera, Pedro Vasquez de, 

30,31 
Land of Darkness, 6 
Las Casas, Bartolome de, 80, 94, 

98, 101 
Las Casas, Francisco de, 144, 

149, 150, 184 
Las Mugeres, island of (Island of 

Women), 95 
Leon, Velasquez de, 135 
Leon, 145; Pedrarias dies at, 

146 
Lerma, Pedro de, 207, 208, 209, 

211 
Levant, Columbus visits the, 36 
Lima, founded (1535), 202; 

besieged, 203; Pizarro with- 
draws to, 207; Almagrists in, 

212 
Lisbon, Columbus at, 17, 18; 

Behaim at, 23 



60, 78; 

9 (note) 
see alss 

de. 



Los Rios, Pedro de, 145, 158 
Luque, Fernando de, 155, 156, 
158, 168, 191, 206 

Machu Picchu, 162, 214 
Madeira, island of, Columbus 

on, 19 
Madeiras, The, 2, 20 
Magellan, Fernando, 

bibliography, 222 
Malabar, 11 
Malay Archipelago, 5, 
Malay Peninsula, 77; 

Golden Chersonese 
Maldonado, Dr. llodrigo 

27 
Mam, Isla de (Man Island), 3 
Man de Satanaxio (Hand of 

Satan), Savage Island called, 

3 
Man Island, see Mam, Isla de 
Manco Ccapac, traditional Inca 

of Peru, 170 
Manco Inca, 202, 205, 214-15 
Mandeville, Sir John. 23. 59; 

Travels, 35 (note) 
Mangu Kaan, 9 
Maps, see Charts and maps 
Mar, Insula in (Island in the 

Sea), 3, 20 
Mar del Sur, see Pacific Ocean 
Maracaibo, Gulf of, 79 
Marchena, Antonio de, 25, 29-30, 

33 
Mare Tenebrosum (Sea of Dark- 
ness, Atlantic Ocean), 2, 6, 12; 

see also Atlantic Ocean 
Maria, Dona, daughter of Pe- 
drarias, 85, 87-88 
Marina, Dona, interpreter for 

Cortes, 105-06, 107, 128, 136, 

153 
Marinus of Tyre, 23 
Matanzas, 94, 97 
Maule, River, 160 
Mauro's, Fra, map of 1457-59, 

47 
Mayas of Yucatan, sacrifice 

Valdivia, 92; Columbus and 



INDEX 



233 



92-93; culture and religion, 
93, 97, 120, 146; see also In- 
dians 

Medina Coeli, Duke of, 26 

Megalithic period of Peruvian 
development, 162, 196, 214 

Melchor, slave captured by Cor- 
doba expedition, 95, 104 

Merchants to the East, 8-11 

Mexico, Cortes's idea of, 78; 
conquest of, 90, 91-138; 
Central Valley of, 116; topog- 
raphy, 159-60; Indian war- 
fare in, 204; viceroy sent to, 
215; bibliography, 222-23 

Mexico City, 117, 123, 147, 152; 
see also Mexico-Tenochtitlan 

Mexico - Tenochtitlan, 114-15, 
115-21, 123-24, 178; Cortes at, 
125, 129-37; siege of, 137 

Missionaries to the East, 5-8 

Moluccas, 6 

Montejo, Francisco de. 111 

Montezuma, 114-15, 179, 180; 
and Cortes, 106, 108, 109, 113, 
115, 126, 129-32, 134, 171, 172, 
. 177, 183; sends embassies to 
Cortes, 107-09, 110, 113, 127- 
128;andTotonacs, 110, 112-13; 
weakness of, 125, 138, 183; 
personal appearance, 130; re- 
lations with Narvaez, 133; 
death, 134 

Morales, Caspar de, 84, 154 

Morla, Francisco de, 135 

Morocco, Batuta in, 9 

Mundus Novus (South America), 
66, 69, 143, 157, 221; see also 
Chile, Peru, South America 

Miinoz, Fernando, 87, 89 

Nahuas of Mexico, 93; religion, 
97, 120; see also Aztecs, In- 
dians 

Naranjo, ruins of, 146 

Narvaez, Panfilo de, 94, 133, 
135 

Navidad, La, fortress on Hayti, 
48, 55-56 



New Andalusia, Ojeda reaches, 

68 
New Spain, 104, 146, 204 
Nicaragua, cacique in Nicaragua, 

140, 141 
Nicaragua, 92, 143, 145, 204 
Nicaragua, Lake, 141, 145, 146 
Nicoya, cacique, 140 
Nicoya, Gulf of, 84 
Nicuesa, Diego, de, 65, 66, 67, 68, 

72, 81, 99, 100 
Nina, The (ship), 38, 39, 44, 48, 

49,51 
Nino, Andres, 139-40, 141 
Nino, Pero Alonso, 39, 64, 65, 

139 
Nito, Cortes reaches, 151 
Noche triste, 135, 190 
Nombre de Dios, 142, 143, 144 
Nuremberg, Behaim from, 22 

Ocampo, Sebastian de, 94 
Odoric of Pordenone, Friar, 5; 

quoted, 5, 7 
Ojeda, Alonso de, 64, 65, 66, 67, 

68, 99, 169 
Olid, Cristobal de, 136, 149, 184 
Olintetl, cacique, 115 
Olmedo, Father, 114 
Oporto, Archbishops of, found 

cities on Antillia, 3 
Orellana, Francisco de, 213 
Organez, Rodrigo de, 207, 208, 

209-10 
Orinoco River, 56, 59 
Orizaba, mountain peak. 111 
Otumba, Cortes at, 136 
Ovando, Nicolas de, 100 
Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernandez de, 

80; quoted, 81-82 

Pachacamac, Peru's shrine to 

"an unknown god," 188, 199 
Pacific Ocean, discovery of, 70, 

76, 79, 90 
Palenque, ruins of, 146, 151 
Palmerin of England, 1-2 
Palos, Columbus at, 25-26, 29- 
32, 50; royal decree to, 37; 



234 



INDEX 



Palos — Continued 
Pinzon recruits sailors at, 
38, 42; Columbus sets sail 
from, 39; Cortes debarks at, 
152 

Panama, Columbus in, 58, 90; 
Balboa made Captain-General 
of, 84; Cortes in, 141; Pizarro 
asks aid from, 204; see also 
Darien 

Panama (city) founded, 142 
Pedrarias at, 143, 144, 145 
Pedrarias sails from, 155, 168 
Almagro in, 156, 158, 166 
Espinosa from, 206 

Panama, Isthmus of, see Darien, 
Panama 

Panciaco, son of Comogre, 71 

Paria, mainland of America dis- 
covered at, 56; pearls found at, 
64 

Parita, peninsula of, 84 

Parocitae, mythical monsters of 
the East, 7 

Pasado, Cape, 167 

Pearl Coast, 64 

Pearl Islands, 84, 155 

Pedrarias, 99; Governor in Da- 
rien, 79, 82, 83, 94; expedition, 
79-81; pefsonal characteris- 
tics, 81, 140, 144-45, 211; 
and Balboa, 81, 82-83, 84-86, 
87-90, 139, 140; and Pizarro, 
84, 88, 143, 155, 156, 169; 
and Cordoba, 143, 144; and 
Gonzalez, 143-44; founds 
Panama, 142; good fortune of, 
145; last years, 145; death 
(1530), 146; Pedro de los Rios 
succeeds, 145, 158 

Perestrello, Bartholomew, father 
of Felipa Columbus, 18-19 

Perestrello, Isabel, mother of 
Felipa Columbus, 19 

Perez, Juan, 30, 32, 33 

Persia, 5 

Persian Gulf, 10; Rabbi Benjamin 
at, 8, 9 (note) 

Peru, 76, 77; conquest of, 71, 143, 



145, 154 et seq., 198-99; scenery 
of, 160; extent of, 160; topog- 
raphy, 160, 161; early develop- 
ment of, 162; Incas in, 162 et 
seq.; roads, 163, 173; religion, 
164, 196-98; agriculture, 164- 
165; arts and literature, 165-66; 
writing, 166; wealth of, 185-90, 
192-93, 198, 200, 208; viceroy 
sent to, 215; bibliography, 224; 
see also Cuzco, Incas, Pizarro 

Peruvians and Spaniards, 195, 
201-05, 210; see also Incas, 
Peru 

Peten, Lake, 150 

Peter Martyr, account of Colum- 
bus's voyage, 52-53; quoted, 
75, 76, 77, 142 

Pinta, The (ship), 38, 39, 44, 48, 
49, 50 

Pinzon, Francisco, brother of 
Martin, 39 

Pinzon, Martin Alonso, of Palos, 
30-31; and Columbus, 31, 32, 
35 (note), 37, 42-43, 48; 
secures recruits, 38, 42; com- 
mands the Pinta, 39, 44; pros- 
pects on own account, 48; 
returns to Spain, 50; death, 
50 

Pinzon, Vicente Yanes, brother 
of Martin, 39, 44, 63 

Piru, see Peru 

Pizarro, Francisco, 65, 199; with 
Balboa, 67, 76; personal char- 
acteristics, 69, 88, 154, 156; 
and Pedrarias, 84, 88, 143, 155, 
156, 169; captures Balboa, 89; 
expedition to Peru, 145, 154 
et seq.; meets Cortes, 152; 
on Island of Gallo, 157, 158, 
159, 169; on Island of Gor- 
gona, 159, 166, 169; at Tum- 
bez, 167; returns to Spain, 
168; made Governor, 168; 
sufferings, 169; founds San 
Miguel, 170; and Atahualpa, 
171-72, 174, 175 et seq., 193- 
195; at Caxamarca, 172, 174- 



INDEX 



235 



Pizarro, Francisco — Continued 
195; treasure, 174, 185-90, 
192-93, 198; sends gold to 
Spain, 190; at Cuzco, 195 et 
seq.; Indian attacks on, 195, 
201-05; Marques de los Atavil- 
los, 200; contest with Alma- 
gro, 200-01, 205-11 ; appeals to 
Spanish America for aid, 204; 
death, 213 

Pizarro, Gonzalo, brother of 
Francisco, 168, 202, 206, 207, 
213 

Pizarro, Hernando, brother of 
Francisco, 168, 178, 183, 186, 
194, 199, 207; sent to Ata- 
hualpa, 175, 176; sent to 
Spain, 190, 199-200, 211-12; 
treasure of, 192; imprison- 
ment, 200, 206, 212, 213; 
commands in Cuzco, 202, 
203, 205, 207, 208; personal 
appearance, 208-09; causes 
Almagro's death, 211 

Pizarro, Juan, brother of Fran- 
cisco, 168, 202, 205 

Polo, Marco, 9, 16, 23, 35 (note), 
42, 99, 215 

Popocatepetl (Smoking Moun- 
tain), 119, 125 

Porto Rico discovered, 55 

Porto Santo, one of Madeiras, 
18, 19 

Portugal, on Behaim's globe, 12, 
23; Columbus in, 17, 18-22, 25, 
28, 49-50; Behaim in, 22, 23; 
adjustment of claims, 78 (note) 

Prester John, 4, 8 

Ptolemy, authority of Behaim, 
23 

Puerto Bello, 58 

Puerto de la Hambre (Hunger 
Harbor), 155 

Puerto del Principe founded, 
94 



Quarequa, cacique, foe of Bal- 
boa, 75 



Quauhtemotzin, Aztec chief, 125, 

137, 138, 150 
Quetzalcoatl, Nahua god of 

order, 120, 126, 127, 135, 

147 
Quevedo, Juan de, bishop of 

Tierra Firme, 81, 85 
Quichua tribes, 163; see also 

Peru, Peruvians 
Quintalbor, cacique, 108 
Quito, 148, 160, 170, 171, 214 
Quixote, Don, 2, 199 

Rabida, La, Monastery of, 25, 
29,34 

Rada, Juan de, 152, 212, 214 

Rastelo, Columbus anchors off, 
49 

Religion, devoutness of the 
Spaniard, 1, 44, 106, 173; 
missionaries to the East, 5-8; 
as aim of Columbus, 35, 46; of 
the Mayas, 93, 97; of the 
Nahuas, 97-98, 120, 124, 127; 
Christianity explained to In- 
dians, 140-41, 181-82; of the 
Peruvians, 164, 196-98 

Reyella (King Island), 3, 20, 
43 

Rica, Isla, 78, 86 

Rios, Pedro de los, 145, 158 

Rojo, Cape, Grijalva at, 97 

Romanticism of the Spaniard, 
1-2, 173 

Rome, Pinz6n in, 31, 32 

Rubruck, Friar, see William of 
Rubruck, Friar 

Ruiz, Bartolome, 157, 159, 166, 
167, 168, 191 

Sabana River, see Balsas River 

Sacrificios, Isla de, 96 

Sacsahuaman, fortress of, 196, 
203 

St. Brandan, Island of, 3, 24 

St. Jacques, Order of. Convent 
of Saints, 18 

Salinas, Plains of, battle, 208- 
211 

Salvador, 141, 145, 147 



236 



INDEX 



i 



Salvagio (Savage Island), 3, 20, 

43 
Samarcand, Gonzalez at, 9 (note) 
San Antonio, Cape, 103 
San Cristobal, Cordoba expedi- 
tion sails from, 95; attempt to 

stop Cortes at, 103 
Sandoval, Gonzalo de, 136, 153 
San Juan de Uliia, an island, 9G, 

106, 107, 110, 133, 167 
San Juan River, Pizarro at, 156, 

157, 169 
San Lucar, Pedrarias expedition 

from, 79 
San Mateo, Bay of, discovered, 

157 
San Miguel, 170, 172, 176, 191 
San Miguel, Gulf of, Balboa at, 

74, 77, 78; Morales and Pizarro 

at, 84 
San Salvador founded, 94 
San Salvador, an island, 45 
San Sebastian, 67 
Santa Fe (Spain), 32 
Santa Maria (Spain), Columbus 

visits pilot of, 30 
Santa Maria, one of Azore Is- 
lands, 49 
Santa Maria, The (ship), 38, 39, 

48 
Santa Maria la Antigua del 

Darien, 67, 70, 78, 89, 91, 

142 
Santangel, Luis de. Treasurer of 

Aragon, 34, 35, 53 
Santiago de Cuba, 94, 96, 101, 

102, 103, 148 
Santiago, River, 168, 200 
Santo Espiritu founded, 94 
Saragossa, Rabbi Benjamin 

visits, 8 
Sargasso Sea, 30, 31, 32 
Savage Island, see Salvagio 
Sea, Island in the, 3 
Sea of Darkness, 2, 6, 12; see 

also Atlantic Ocean 
Seneca quoted, 17 
Seven Cities, Isle of the, see 

Antillia 



Sevilla, Columbus at, 50 

Shipbuilding, by Balboa, 86, 
136; by Cortes, 136 

"Snake Woman" of the Aztecs, 
124 

Sosa, Lope de, 87, 145 

Soto, Hernando de, discoverer of 
the Mississippi, 80, 199; with 
Cordoba, 144; with Pizarro, 
169, 174, 175, 176, 178, 186, 
192, 194, 201 

South America, 59, 63; see also 
Chile, Mundus Novus, Peru 

South Sea, see Pacific Ocean 

Spain, Columbus in, 25 et seq., 
50 et seq., 58-59; Balboa sends 
to, 72, 74; adjustment of 
claims, 78 (note); Cortes in, 
152-53; the Pizarros' relations 
with, 168, 199-200, 211-12 

Stone Age, see Megalithic period 

Strabo, authority of Behaim, 
23 

Suarez, Catalina, wife of Cortes, 
101, 153 

Sun worship, 196-98 

Sur, Mar del, see Pacific Ocean 

Swallows, Island of, see Cozumel 

Sypanso, see Cipangu 

Tabasco, cacique, 104 
Tabasco, district of, 96, 105, 106, 

109, 150 
Tabasco River, 104; see also 

Grijalva, Rio de 
Tacuba, district, 129 
Tacuba Causeway, 134-35 
Tafur, Pedro, 158, 166 
Tagus River, Columbus enters, 

49 
Talavera, Hernando de, 27 
Tamerlane the Great, 9 (note) 
Tampu Tocco (Machu Picchu?), 

162; see also Machu Picchu 
Tartary, 30 

Telles, Fernao, 20-21, 62 
Tenochtitlan, see Mexico-Te- 

nochtitlan 
Teotilac, 150 



INDEX 



237 



Terminos, Lake, Grijalva expedi- 
tion at, 96 
Teuhtlilli, 108, 109 
Tezcatlipoca, Aztec god, 120, 127, 

133 
Tezcoeo, Aztec settlement, 129, 

133, 136 
Tezcoeo, Lake, 116, 117, 118- 

119, 125, 136 
Thibet, early travelers to, 5 
Thule (Iceland), Columbus in, 

17-18 
Tierra Firme, 69, 142, 156; see 

also Central America, Mundus 

Novus 
Tikal, ruins of, 146 
Tindilla, Count, Peter Martyr 

writes to, 52 
Titicaca, Lake, 161, 195 
Titicaca Valley, 162 
TIacopan, Aztec settlement, 133 
Tlaloc, Nahua god of rain and 

fertility, 120, 127 
Tlascala, Indian community, 125, 

128. 136 
Tlatelolco, see Mexico-Tenoch- 

titlan 
Tlatelolco Pyramid, 135, 137 
Toledo, Spanish court at, 152; 

Pizarroat, 168 
Toparca, brother of Atahualpa, 

202 
Tordesillas, Treaty of (1494), 

78 (note) 
Torres, Luis de, 47 
Toscanelli, Paolo, 25 (note) 
Totonac Indians and Cortes, 

110 et seq. 
Trade routes, 145 
Trinidad, founded, 94; Velas- 
quez tries to stop Cortes at, 

103 
Triunfo de la Cruz, 149 
Trujillo (Honduras), 151 
Trujillo (Spain), Pizarro a native 

of, 154, 168 
Tubanama, 76 
Tumaco, cacique in Darien, 

77 



Tumbez, Pizarro and, 157, 167, 

169-70, 191 
Tyre, Rabbi Benjamin visits, 

8 



Ulua (Mexico), 98, 107, 115; 

see also Mexico 
Uraba, district, 65 
Uraba, Gulf of, 104 
Urubamba River, 162 
Utatlan, native Guatemalan 

settlement, 147 



Valderrabano, Andres de, 87, 

89 
Valdes, Francisco Vasquez Coro- 

nado de, 80 
Valdivia, Juan de, 68, 69, 71, 

72, 91-92, 93, 104 
Valdivia, Pedro de, 207, 214 
Vallodolid, Columbus dies at, 

59 
Valparaiso (Chile) founded, 214 
Valparaiso (Portugal), Columbus 

at, 49 
Valverde, Vicente de, 180-183 
Vasquez de la Frontera, Pedro, 

see La Frontera 
Velasco, Pedro de, 30 
Velasquez, Diego, Governor of 

Cuba, 94, 95, 96, 98; and 

Cortes, 99, 101, 102-03, 109, 

133, 149 
Venezuela, 66 
Venezuela, Gulf of, Q5 
Vera Cruz. 96, 111, 114, 136. 

148, 151 
Veragua, 65, 68, 100-01 
Vespucci, Amerigo, 62, 65-66; 

bibliography, 221-22 
Vignaud, Henry, cited, 25 (note) 
Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, see 

Vera Cruz 
Villac Umu, medicine-man of 

Cuzco, 201 
Viracocha, first Inca of Peru, 

170 



238 



INDEX 



Watling Island, see Guanahani 
West Indies, 43; chance voyages 

to, 20; see also Antilles, 

Cuba, Espanola 
William of Caseneuve alias 

Columbus, 15, 16 
William of Rubruck, Friar, 5; 

quoted, 7 
Women, Island of, see Las 

Mugeres, Island of 



Xochimilico, Lake, 116, 117 
Xocotlan, 125 

Yucatan, 91-92, 96, 97, 104-05, 

150, 223 
Yztaccihuatl (White Woman), 

119, 125 

Zamudio. Martin. 67-68, 69; 

72 



AN OUTLINE OF THE PLAN OF 
THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA 




The fifty titles of the Series fall into eight topical sequences or groups, 
each with a dominant theme of its own-*- 



I. T^he Morning of America 
time: 1492-1763 

THE theme of the first sequence is the struggle of nations for the 
possession of the New World. The mariners of four European king- 
doms — Spain, Portugal, France, and England — are intent upon the 
discovery of a new route to Asia. They come upon the American continent 
which blocks the way. Spain plants colonies in the south, lured by gold. 
Trance, in pursuit of the fur trade, plants colonies in the north. Englishmen, 
in search of homes and of a wider freedom, occupy the Atlantic seaboard. 
These Englishmen come in time to need the land into which the French 
have penetrated by way of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and a 
mighty struggle between the two nations takes place in the wilderness, 
ending in the expulsion of the French. This sequence comprises ten volumes: 

1. THE RED man's CONTINENT, hy EUiworth Hutjtington 

2. THE SPANISH CONQUERORS, ify Irvifig Bcrdine Richman 

3. ELIZABETHAN SEA-DOGS, by William Wood 

4. CRUSADERS OF NEW FRANCE, by William Bennett Munro 

5. PIONEERS OF THE OLD SOUTH, by Mary Johnston 

6. THE FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND, by Charks M. Andveus 

7. DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON, by Maud Wilder Goodwin 

8. THE QUAKER COLONIES, by Sydney G. Fisher 

9. COLONIAL FOLKWAYS, by Charles M. Andrews 

10. THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE, by George M. Wrong 



II. The Winning of Independence 
time: 1763-1815 

The French peril has passed, and the great territory between the Alle- 
ghanies and the Mississippi is now open to the Englishmen on the seaboard, 
with no enemy to contest their right of way except the Indian. But the 
question arises whether these Englishmen in the New World shall submit 
to political dictation from the King and Parliament of England. To decide 
this question the War of the Revolution is fought; the Union is born: 
and the second war with England follows. Seven volumes: 

11. THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION, by Carl Becker 

12. WASHINGTON AND HIS COMRADES IN ARMS, by GeOTge M. WrOTlg 

13. THE FATHERS OF THE CONSTITUTION, by Max Farrund 

14. WASHINGTON AND HIS COLLEAGUES, by Henry Jones Ford 

15. JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES, by Allen Johnson 

16. JOHN MARSHALL AND THE CONSTITUTION, by Edward S. CorWtn 

17. THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA, by Ralph D. Paine 

III. The Vision of the West 

time: 1750-1890 

The theme of the third sequence is the American frontier — the conquest 
of the continent from the Alleghanies to the Pacific Ocean. The story covers 
nearly a century and a half, from the first crossing of the Alleghanies by 
the backwoodsmen of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas (about 
1750) to the heyday of the cowboy on the Great Plains in the latter part 
of the nineteenth century. This is the marvelous tale of the greatest migra- 
tions in history, told in nine volumes as follows: 

18. PIONEERS or THE OLD SOUTHWEST, by Constance Lindsay Skinner 

19. THE OLD NORTHWEST, by Fredertc Austin Ogg 

ao. THE REIGN OF ANDREW jACK-SON, by Frederic Austin Ogg 

21. THE PATHS OF INLAND COMMERCE, by Archer B. Hulbert 

22. ADVENTURERS OF OREGON, by Constance Lindsay Skinner 

23. THE SPANISH BORDERLANDS, by Herbert E. Bolton 

24. TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR, by Nathaniel W. Stephenson 

25. THE FORTY-NINERS, by Stewart Edward White 

id. THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER, by Emerson Hough 



IV. The Storm of Secession 
time: 1830-1876 

The curtain rises on the gathering storm of secession. The theme of the 
fourth sequence is the preservation of the Union, which carries with it the 
extermination of slavery. Six volumes as follows: 

27. THE COTTON KINGDOM, by William E. Dodd 

28. THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE, by Jessc Macy 

29. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE UNION, by Nathaniel W. Stephenson 

30. THE DAV OF THE CONFEDERACY, by Nathaniel W. Stephenson 

31. CAPTAINS OF THE CIVIL WAR, by fVilUam Wood 

32. THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX, by Walter Lynwood Fleming 

V, The Intellectual Life 

Two volumes follow on the higher national! life, telling of the nation's great 
teachers and interpreters: 

22' THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION, by Edwin E. Slosson 
34. THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN LITERATURE, by Bliss Perry 

VI. The Epic of Commerce and Industry 

The sixth sequence is devoted to the romance of industry and business, 
and the dominant theme is the transformation caused by the inflow of 
immigrants and the development and utilization of mechanics on a great 
scale. The long age of muscular power has passed, and the era of mechanical 
power has brought with it a new kind of civilization. Eight volumes: 

2^. OUR FOREIGNERS, by Samuel P. Orth 

36. THE OLD MERCHANT MARINE, by Ralph D. Putm 

37. THE AGE OF INVENTION, by Holland Thompson 

38. THE RAILROAD BUILDERS, by John Moody 

39. THE AGE OF BIG BUSINESS, by Burton J. Hendrtck 

40. THE ARMIES OF LABOR, by Samuel p. Orth 

41. THE MASTERS OF CAPITAL, by John Moody 
^1. THE NEW SOUTH, by Holland Thompson 



VI I . The Era of World Power 

The seventh sequence carries on the story of government and diplomacy 
and political expansion from the Reconstruction (1876) to the present day, 
I in six volumes: 

43. THE BOSS AND THE MACHINE, by Somuel P. Orth 

44. THE CLEVELAND ERA, by Henry Jones Ford 

45. THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE, by Solon J. Buck 

46. THE PATH OF EMPIRE, by Carl Russell Ftsh 

47. THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND HIS TIMES, by Horold Howlond 

48. wooDROw WILSON AND THE WORLD WAR, by Churks SeymouT 



VIII. Our Neighbors 

Now to round out the story of the continent, the Hispanic peoples on 
the south and the Canadians on the north are taken up where they were 
dropped further back in the Series, and these peoples are followed down 
to the present day: 

49. THE CANADIAN DOMINION, by OscoT D. Skelton 

50. THE HISPANIC NATIONS OF THE NEW vfOKVO^by fVWiam R. Shepherd 

The Chronicles of America is thus a great synthesis, giving a new projec- 
tion and a new interpretation of American History. These narratives are 
works of real scholarship, for every one is written after an exhaustive 
examination of the sources. Many of them contain new facts; some of them 
— such as those by Howland, Seymour, and Hough — are founded on inti- 
mate personal knowledge. But the originality of the Series lies, not chiefly 
in new facts, but rather in new ideas and new combinations of old facts. 

The General Editor of the Series is Dr. Allen Johnson, Chairman of the 
Department of History of Yale University, and the entire work has been 
planned, prepared, and published under the control of the Council's 
Committee on Publications of Yale University. 

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

143 ELM STREET, NEW HAVEN 
522 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



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